


A Girl, A Guy, and the War - Deleted Scenes

by TheAutotheist



Series: A Girl, A Guy, and the Never-Ending War [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, But mostly angst, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Fluff, Genderswap, Missing Scene, Not told in chronological order, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Seriously this relationship runs on angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:38:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 55,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1591949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAutotheist/pseuds/TheAutotheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The adventures and misadventures of Steph Rogers throughout her long life both before and after the war that turned her into America's first super hero.</p><p>(This is a collection of vignettes that happen in and around my other story "A Girl, A Guy, and the War," but that I couldn't find a place for in order to have a cohesive plot, and that I have since added after completing that story. You probably don't need to read that story to follow these one-shot scenes, but I would really appreciate it if you did.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Dress

Going through her mother’s things after the funeral was a painful process. It was even more painful knowing she would end up selling most of them. But she needed the money, especially if she was going to keep the apartment. Bucky had suggested they move in together, to share the cost, but Steph knew there was no way anyone would let an unmarried girl and an unmarried guy live together, no matter how much she looked and acted like a boy. They would have to go somewhere people didn’t know them. And she would have to keep up the act all the time. Just to be able to friends with Bucky the way every other pair of best pals could.

Steph sighed and fingered one of her mother’s dresses. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it before, in the privacy of her own mind. She had even thought of what it would be like to marry him, to be married to him. Steph gripped the fabric in her hands a little tighter. It would never happen, though. No matter how much the neighbors insisted on it when they were little. Steph wasn’t Bucky’s kind of girl.

She didn’t flirt. She didn’t dress up. She didn’t act innocent or dumb. And she didn’t go dancing. Every girl she had ever seen Bucky with was like that. So it was a completely ridiculous notion to entertain the possibility of ever being able to live with Bucky.

Or that he would ever look at her that way.

Steph pulled out the dress and laid it on the bed. It was her mother’s nice dress, her Sunday best. She only had a few dresses by the time she died, but she had never thought of selling this one. She had once told Steph it was the dress she had been wearing when she met her father.

Steph ran her palm over the soft fabric. Even she had to admit it was a pretty dress. It was a summer dress, so it had short sleeves, which was unusual for her mother. It was a soft, satiny lavender with a layer of lace along the cuffs and neckline. A matching satin ribbon wrapped around the waist, and a row of cloth-covered buttons ran in a line up to the V-shaped neck.

Steph tried to imagine what her mother would have looked like in this dress, back when she was happy and youthful, before life had taken so much from her.

On a whim, Steph lifted the dress and spun around so she could hold it up against her and see her reflection in the mirror. It was a stark contrast as her man’s pants and coat peaked around the edges of the outfit. This was something Steph had never, ever done before, but she quickly shucked off her coat and boots, followed by her suspenders, shirt, and pants. She didn’t like seeing herself naked, so she avoided looking in the mirror. She pulled the dress over her head and reached around to tie the satin ribbon into a bow, cinching the waist of the dress to give her some semblance of a figure.

When she looked in the mirror again, the difference was startling. She smoothed out the skirt and then twisted back and forth to see it twirl around her legs. Her short hair looked a little odd against the dress, but it didn’t look bad. Actually, the lavender color went well with her blonde hair and blue eyes.

She hated dresses, and hadn’t even worn one to her mother’s funeral, so she didn’t know why she had the desire to do this now. Perhaps she wanted some connection to her mother, to the woman she had been.

And then a passing thought crossed her mind, an idle query. “What would Bucky think of me in this…?” she mumbled.

And then she knew why she had wanted to try on the dress. Her face heated up, and in the mirror, she could see it turn red. If Bucky saw her like this, would he look at her like he did those other girls? Would he discard her just as quickly too? If he saw her as a girl, would he no longer see her as a friend? Would it just make him bored with her?

Steph clenched fistfuls of the skirt in her hands. She hadn’t remembered grabbing it.

This was ridiculous, and a waste of time. Bucky promised to come over and help her sort through the stuff, and to help her try to get the best price for it. She had better change back before he saw her, since he would probably be there any minute. But she stayed rooted to the spot, just staring at her reflection. If it was for Bucky, she could be a girl. She just had to show him.

Instead of changing out of the dress, she grabbed her mother’s brush off her dresser and quickly brushed down her wavy hair, trying to get it to look nicer. Then she dug around in the closet until she found her mother’s pair of nice patent leather shoes. They had a one inch heel, that was luckily thick enough that Steph didn’t stumble when she stood in them, and were a dark black.

She looked in the mirror again, and finally noticed her face. It was a little smudgy from rummaging through old boxes, and whatever else she had been doing recently. She usually never gave much thought to keeping her face clean, but this time she hurried to the bathroom and grabbed a washcloth so she could wash the dirt off her face. She was very mindful of keeping the dress from getting wet as she rubbed her face until it felt raw. It was a little red when she looked in the mirror again, but at least it was clean.

She looked in the mirror one last time, but something was still missing. Her face was clean, but there was something else she needed. She looked at her mother’s dresser again. She had sold all her jewelry except for her wedding band, which she was buried with, but she still had a lacy-looking headband. Steph grabbed that and arranged it around her hair.

Looking in the mirror, she almost laughed. She looked a bit like one of the teenage girls she had seen when she was very little, a flapper. And for the first time her hair looked right. She had to admit, she finally looked like a girl.

And just in time. She heard a key turn in the lock of the front door, and then Bucky’s tired voice said, “Steph? ‘m here.” They had long since given up knocking, especially when they each knew where the hidden keys were for each others’ places.

For a moment, Steph hesitated. He had come off a shift at the factory to help her out. She shouldn’t take up his time with this. But then she saw her reflection again. She was already dressed up. Might as well. So she walked through the doorway from her mother’s bedroom to the living room

“Bucky,” she said, trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice. “What do you think?”

She held out the sides of the skirt just as he turned toward her. He froze when he saw her and the key fell out of his hand and clattered onto the wooden floor.

He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out. He wetted his lips, and tried again. “What are you doing?”

She couldn’t tell yet if that was a positive or negative reaction. All she could read on his face was shock.

“I thought I would try on one of my mother’s old dresses,” she said quietly. She didn’t tell him that she wanted him to see what she looked like as a proper girl. She didn’t tell him that she wanted him to stop chasing other skirts when she was right in front of him and had been all along. Instead, she said, “How do I look?”

He swallowed, and she thought maybe that was a good sign. “You look…” He finally seemed to get over his shock, because he bent down to grab the key he had dropped, and when he straightened up again, he had on his trademark carefree smirk. “You look completely ridiculous. Better not let anyone else see you like that. They might make you actually dress like a girl.”

Steph’s heart fell. She let go of the skirt and let her hands hang at her sides. But then she smiled. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“You really scared me for a second there. I thought you were serious!”

“Heh, yeah. As if I would actually want to go around wearing clothes like this.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, and to her ears, her voice felt hollow. “Too uncomfortable.” She turned away. “I was just joking around. I’m gonna change out of this stupid thing, and then we can go through my mother’s things.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Got you good, didn’t I?”

He laughed and then smiled at her. “You bet.” He continued to smile at her, but there was a hardness there she couldn’t make out. He was pretending it was all good fun, but maybe he was mad at her for trying to pollute their friendship with this.

Steph turned away and closed the door. She leaned back against it gently and clutched the dress over her heart. Something deep in her chest hurt worse than an asthma attack. It made her feel ragged, and she was worried for a second that she would stop breathing. Maybe she really would have an attack. It hurt so bad, so much worse than any physical cuts or bruises she had ever endured, and she didn’t know why.

Even though her stunt had ulterior motives, she just wanted to see Bucky’s reaction. She didn’t think, whatever happened, that it would have such an effect on her.

She finally pushed herself away from the door. The only thing that kept her from tearing the damn dress off was that it had belonged to her mother. And that it was probably worth some money. So she unbuckled the shoes and stepped out of them. She removed the headband and set it carefully on the dresser. And then she carefully untied the ribbon and pulled the dress over her head, before setting it out on the bed as it had been before.

This time she did look in the mirror. She had small lumps for breasts, a thin waist, and almost no hips to speak of. Of course Bucky would laugh at her. She had no figure. She looked nothing like the women he wanted. No man would want a woman like this. Steph wrapped her arms around her body to cover up her breasts. Sometimes she wore a long strip of cloth around them to hide what little roundness she did have. But she had discarded it when she had put on the dress.

She snatched it up off the floor and quickly wound it around her chest again. She quickly pulled on her shirt and buttoned it up. When she looked in the mirror again, she looked nothing like a girl, just a skinny boy. And that was the way she preferred it, she told herself.

Bucky was right. If she started acting like a girl, she would have to keep doing it. Even for him, she didn’t want to do that. Since he was never going to think of her as a girl anyway, then there really was no point.

Steph finished getting dressed, and then she quickly wiped her eyes with the same washcloth. They had turned a little red, though she hadn’t cried at all. She never cried, not even at her mother’s funeral. That was too girly for her.

Finally, she opened the door again and found Bucky sprawled out on the couch with his arms behind his head. When he saw her, he sat up and smiled, and this time it looked way more genuine. “Damn, that took a long time. It’s almost like you are a real girl.”

The smile she gave him in response came a lot easier. This was familiar, this was safe. It was a joke they shared sometimes. “Now I know why I never wear those girl’s clothes. Way too complicated.” She held out her hand to help him up, and he took it without hesitation. “Come on. You promised to help me.”

“That I did.”

Bucky followed her into the bedroom. At that moment, Steph shut off the part of her heart that longed for him, that wanted him. After that, any time she had any inkling of the feeling, she would remember him laughing at her, and her heart would grow a little colder. It was better this way, she kept telling herself. Some day, she might actually believe it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for how angsty this one is. It's a scene I really liked in my mind, but couldn't find a place for in my actual fic, since I started it where the Cap movies start. I promise not all of them will be pre-movies and thus excessively angsty.


	2. Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During the war, and after they get together. Steph learns about dancing.

The day after Steph and the POWs returned from her daring rescue mission, Phillips decided to pack up and head back to the main SSR base in London. After she pointed out the locations of the Hydra factories she had glimpsed on the map in the isolation ward where she found Bucky, the Colonel  assigned her the task of taking them down. She must have really impressed him with her AWOL stunt because he even let her pick the members of her unit herself.

She found the men who had helped her lead the prison break at a bar, fully enjoying not being dead, captured, or tortured. After a moment of shock all around, they agreed to join her team.

“I told you,” Bucky said when she let him know. “They’re all idiots.”

Steph sat next to him at the bar. “What about you? Are you ready to follow “Captain America” into the jaws of death?”

“Hell no,” he said quickly, over his drink. But then he laughed. “The scrawny girl from Brooklyn who never backed down from a fight. I’ll follow her.”

Steph smiled to herself, and didn’t mention how he had scared her for a second.

“But you’re keeping the outfit, right?” He turned his best smirk on her and she almost laughed, because it was verging on lecherous. It was a smirk he had turned on many a pretty girl back at home, and it was satisfying that for once he was only looking at her when he was acting like a pervert.

“Maybe with some modifications,” she said, trying not to laugh.

They both looked over when the singing from the drunken soldiers in the other room suddenly died down. And that was when Agent Peggy Carter walked through the door, wearing a stunning red dress and all bust and perfect curves. Steph rose to greet her, but Bucky practically jumped out of his seat.

“Agent Carter,” Steph said, mildly amused by all the reactions around the bar.

Bucky’s eyes did a quite obvious once-over of Peggy’s body, before snapping back to her face when she looked at him. “Ma’am,” he said quickly.

Peggy looked back at Steph and raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow, followed by a small quirk of her lips. “Howard has some new equipment for you to try out, Captain,” she said, her voice completely casual. “Tomorrow morning?”

“Sounds good.” Steph smiled. “Going out?”

“Yes. Somewhere not surrounded by soldiers recently returned from the front.” She looked back into the other room when the drunken singing started up again. “Looks like your top squad is prepping for duty.”

“What’s wrong? You don’t like music?” Bucky asked. He really couldn’t stop himself from flirting sometimes.

“I do, actually.” Peggy smiled at Steph. “And I’m quite fond of dancing. What about you Captain? Have you ever been dancing?” Her eyes quickly darted between Steph and Bucky, too fast for him to see, especially as he was not looking at her face again. But Steph caught it, and wondered if maybe they hadn’t been as subtle or quiet as she had previously thought.

“Not exactly,” Steph said. The ironic thing was, she had done what she thought Peggy was implying, but she’d never actually gone dancing.

“You should take advantage while you’re in London. Before you go off on these suicide missions,” Peggy said. “But that’s not what I came to tell you.” She straightened up. “Tomorrow morning, 0800, Captain.” She turned and walked towards the exit.

“I’ll be there,” Steph said, and then turned to look at Bucky, who was clearly enjoying watching Agent Carter walk away. “So how’s that superpower going for you?”

“What?” He whipped back around and looked at her as if he knew he had been caught doing something bad.

Steph bit her lip to keep from laughing. “The one where you’re able to burn a woman’s clothes off with your gaze alone.”

“I’m sorry, Steph,” he said quickly. “I shouldn’t have…”

“Oh please.” She waved her hand. “Like I’m not used to the way you are around beautiful dames. If I wasn’t, there’d have to be something wrong with me.”

“Yeah, but it’s different n--”

She silenced him with a look, and then said quickly, “--since she’s someone we work with. Yes, it is. But I also know Agent Carter would smack you silly if you tried anything. So I’m not too worried.” She continued to look at him sternly. They were still in a crowded bar, with people who knew and recognized them. Anyone could overhear them, and he had been about to say something could have potentially gotten them in serious trouble, whether or not Peggy already suspected.

Bucky didn’t say anything, just continued to look at her. After a moment, he grabbed his drink and finished it in one gulp. He set the mug down on the bar perhaps a little harder than he intended and said, “You know, it’s getting a bit too crowded in here. I’m gonna head out. Care to join me?”

Steph nodded and followed him out. They waved to the others as they walked by, even though her “top squad” was well and truly beyond the point of just being drunk by then.

There were surprisingly few people on the street, and after a block, they had the road to themselves. Bucky stuck his hands deep in his pockets and didn’t look at her as he said, “Are you mad at me?”

She glanced at him, and then followed suit, sticking her hands in her pockets and falling into step beside him. She didn’t answer for a few paces, and when she did, she said calmly, “No. Like I said, if I wasn’t used to how you flirt and hit on any pretty thing that crosses your path by now, I’d be blind or stupid.”

“Being used to it doesn’t mean you can’t still be mad.”

She sighed, but didn’t look at him as they walked. “You’ve done a lot worse.”

“Oh, thanks,” he muttered.

“That’s not what I mean.” She looked down at her feet. “Eyeing Peggy is nothing to some of the other stuff you’ve done right in front of me. Sometimes I thought you were doing it on purpose, rubbing it in my face.”

“I wasn’t,” he said quickly. “It was… Sometimes I wanted to see how you’d react. I figured I couldn’t be the one to make the first move. Anyone who treated you like a girl got punched. I didn’t want to make you mad at me.”

Steph sighed again. “I did make the first move, idiot… You just didn’t know it for what it was.” He glanced over at her and she caught the confusion on his face, but she didn’t turn to look at him. “The dress…” she said so quietly she was sure he hadn’t heard her for a second.

“ _That’s_ what that was about?” he said a lot louder than she would have liked. Even if they were alone on the street, she didn’t want to attract attention. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Why didn’t you?” She glared at him briefly, but then went back to looking forward.

“You are mad,” he said in a very matter-of-fact way.

Steph rolled her eyes. “Not about Peggy. And what happened back then, it’s in the past. Apparently I just needed to wait until I thought you were delirious to kiss you and that would have done it. I’m not angry that it took both of us going to war for something to finally happen. I’m just happy it did happen.”

“Still, it’s not right of me to… try to flirt with other dames, after we...”

“It’s okay, Bucky. Really.” She looked sideways at him. “You’re not planning to try to sleep with Agent Carter, are you?”

He stopped and rounded on her. “Of course not.”

She stopped and smiled at him. “Then it’s okay. Besides, you keeping up your flirtatious ways will help keep what’s going on between us a secret. Can’t have everyone thinking we’re too compromised for the mission we’ve been given.”

He looked at her, but he didn’t seem satisfied with that answer.

“What?” she asked, unable to read his expression.

“You deserve better.”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Honest.” She smiled and gently touched his arm. “And this, everything that’s happened since finding you, it’s more than I could have hoped for. If I didn’t like even the crazy skirt-chasing part of you, then it would be false.”

“All that skirt-chasing was only cause I wasn’t with you.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and hooked a few fingers around hers, careful not to look too obvious in case someone saw them.

“It was hard to tell that from the outside,” she said, her voice too thick. She added, “Jerk,” just for good measure.

He smiled and leaned towards her, but then stopped and looked around the street before grabbing her hand and pulling her into an alley between two buildings. Completely hidden in darkness, he pressed her against the brick wall and kissed her, with both hands cupping her face.

She kissed him back hard and wrapped her arms around his waist. She pulled him as close as she could, leaning fully back against wall. He braced one hand against the wall by her head, giving in to his weight so he could press closer. She grabbed fistfuls of his jacket in her hands as she opened her mouth. Clearly neither of them were willing to take this kiss slowly, opting instead for a lot of teeth and tongue and heavy breathing.

“Been thinking about the next chance I’d get to kiss you again all day…” he muttered between kisses, sliding his hand down to her neck.

“Hope it didn’t distract you from anything important, Sergeant Barnes…” She sucked his bottom lip between her teeth, which he then replaced with his tongue. This effectively silenced them for a moment.

He eventually got out when they paused for breath, “Take all my orders from the Captain now. She’ll let me know if my actions aren’t…” He didn’t quite finish the sentence as he took that moment to copy her actions. “Satisfactory,” he ended after he successfully elicited a moan from her. And then he moved his lips along her face and bit her earlobe, trying to get more sounds out of her. He sucked on a spot on her neck just under her jaw, but then glided his teeth lower down to the front of her neck above her collarbone before continuing. It was a place she could cover up a lot easier if need be. There he didn’t hold back to suck and lick and nip until he had turned her skin red. She clenched his jacket tighter in her hands and tried her best not to tear it.

When she couldn’t stand not kissing him anymore, she pulled his head back up and crashed her lips against his, drawing him into another long, deep kiss. “You are such a bad man,” she said at last, against his lips, which she then felt turn up in a smirk.

“Would you like me any other way?”

She laughed and tilted her head forward so she could rest their foreheads together. “No. I like you just the way you are.”

He kissed her one more time. “Good.”

“We shouldn’t stay out here,” she said with a sigh and leaned her head back against the wall so she could look into his eyes.

“Where do you suggest we go? Back to the SSR base?” he asked sceptically.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” She mimicked his trademark smirk as best she could. “Captain America gets a private room.” And then the two of them had a pair of matching smirks.

They tried not to be too obvious when they got back to the base. Steph headed to her room first, and ten minutes later Bucky followed, so it didn’t seem like they were going there together. While waiting, she messed with the radio until she found a song she actually knew and liked. Its gentle notes drifted through the evening air, and it was still playing when Bucky came in.

He carefully closed the door behind himself so it didn’t make a noise, and then he whistled as he looked around the room. “Captain America gets a nice set up.”

She smiled. “Apparently the star-spangled costume is good for something.”

He continued to look around the room, and then noticed the radio. “This is a good song,” he commented.

“Yeah.” She looked over at the radio and then laughed despite herself.

“What?

“I just remembered what Agent Carter said.” She looked over at him. “I think she’s on to us, by the way, based on her comment about dancing. Which is funny, considering. What I thought she was implying, that we’ve done, when we slept together. But actually dancing? I’ve never done it.”

He frowned. “You’ve never danced?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“But you’ve come with me before, when I’ve gone dancing.”

“Yeah, and I stood near the wall and watching you dance with some girl.” She shrugged. “Not a lot of people were lining up to dance with me then.”

He didn’t say anything, he just walked over and turned the radio up. Then he turned and held out his hand to her.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Asking you to dance.” He kept holding out his hand.

“Bucky…”

“You said you’ve never danced, so I’m fixing that.”

“If you’re just trying to make fun of me…”

“When have you known me to actually make fun of you?” He smiled softly. “It’s just a dance.”

She tentatively took his hand and he pulled her closer. He took her other hand and put it on his shoulder before setting his hand on her hip. He moved slowly and guided her as he did. Occasionally she looked down at their feet to make sure she wouldn’t accidentally step on his. She didn’t want to end up being a stereotypical bad dancer.

After the fifth or sixth time she looked down, he look his hand off her hip and pushed her face back up with his fingers under her chin. “This tends to work better if you actually look at your partner.”

She flushed slightly, but then kept her eyes on his face. Perhaps it was determination, or her new super-soldier coordination, but she never did step on his toes. They circled the room, swaying through the rest of the song on the radio, and straight into the song that followed it, even though they were moving completely out of time with both. Sometimes he tried spinning her, and she let him. She let him dictate all the moves, and found it easy to follow where he lead. Once she stopped looking down, it wasn’t hard to keep her eyes on his face. She just kept looking into his blue eyes and saw all the affection he had for her. It was a pleasant feeling, and so different from any of the times before when they had kissed. Even being completely naked, and making love hadn’t felt as intimate as this. Steph wondered if that was how all dancing was, or if this feeling only happened when you danced with the right partner. Eventually their movements slowed to swaying back and forth, the music behind them completely forgotten, until they were barely moving.

When they stilled completely, Steph let out a breath and leaned her head against his shoulder. As they had danced, something inside her woke up, something that hadn’t thawed completely even when he had first kissed her the other night. When they slept together, it was all about urgency, about finally being together in a way that neither of them had realized they had both so desperately wanted. But this was different. It was a quieter, more satisfied feeling. One she had shut down completely when she began to think Bucky would never see her as more than a friend. So it was slower to come back. She never realized there was more than a physical need. This ran so much deeper. For once she didn’t try to stop it, but let it go through her. It filled her with such serenity the likes of which she had never felt before.

“And now you’ve danced,” Bucky said quietly against her ear. When he moved to pull back, she stopped him.

“No, wait. Can we stay like this for just a minute? Right now, everything is perfect. We’re about to go off on these life-or-death missions and I know things will not be perfect like this for a long time, possible never again. So I want to stay like this just a little longer.”

He gently planted a kiss to the top of her head as an answer.

Steph closed her eyes, and relaxed her body against him. She tried to imagine what a younger version of herself would have said if she was able to go back and tell her this would happen. Call them both crazy, no doubt, and then try to hit her for making fun. The thought brought a smile to her face.

They stayed like that for a few more minutes. He rested his chin on top of her head and didn’t try to move her until she eventually pulled back and looked at his face again. After that, they silently discarded their clothes and made their way to her bed. Falling asleep in his arms after, it was a lot different than when they had both tried to fit on a cot. The contentment it filled her with was not quite the same as when they had been dancing. But it was close.

 


	3. Give Me One More Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the chapter title. I like Maroon 5. 
> 
> Set just before the beginning of the story. There were things Steph wanted to say and do, but instead this is how they spend Bucky's last night before shipping out.

The punk in the theater never realized she was a girl. Except for a slightly higher voice, there was no way he could tell. She dressed like a guy, though a short and scrawny guy. So he didn’t hold back anything when he dragged her into the alley to beat her up. She really wanted to win this one fight on her own, but after getting knocked down for the dozenth time, she heard a familiar voice say, “Hey! Pick on someone your own size,” followed by scrambling, and then hurried footsteps.

A moment later she heard a sigh, and then Bucky said, “Steph.”

“I had him,” she said as she got herself up and tried to dust herself off.

“You got to stop picking fights with guys who are too stupid to tell you’re a girl. They won’t hesitate to beat the complete crap out of you.”

“Well maybe I don’t want them to hold back.” She used the sleeve of her coat to wipe at her face and her split lip.

“Or they might actually realize you’re a girl and do worse than try to beat you up.” His voice was soft as he said this, careful. He did actually worry about her.

“I’m not afraid of any…” she started to say as she looked up, but then she saw he was fully dressed in his army uniform “one…” She straightened up, forgetting the task of cleaning herself up. “You got your orders?” she asked.

Bucky held out his arms so she could see his whole uniform. “Sergeant James Barnes shipping out for England first thing tomorrow morning.”

Steph’s chest felt tight. She didn’t want him to leave, for many reasons. The most prevalent of which was the very real fear that he would die over there and she would never see him again. “I should be going with you,” she said quietly.

“You’re never going to get over there the way you want,” he said. “You know they’ll never let you enlist. The best you can hope for is to work in the army offices, or as a nurse.”

“Do you think I would be good at either of those things?” she asked.

“No,” he admitted.

Steph sighed and brushed off her hands. “Yeah.”

Bucky looked at her for a moment, and then he smiled and threw his arm around her, pulling her out of the alley. “Come on. Let’s go get you cleaned up.” He shoved her shoulder gently and fell in step beside her.

“For what?” she asked.

“It’s my last night here. We’re gonna go have some fun.” He shoved the day’s newspaper in her hands, and the entire front page above the fold was taken up with a picture from the expo.

Steph smiled softly to herself. It would be just like the fairs they went to as kids, though half the time they had to sneak in. It seemed like a good way to have fun on his last day before shipping out.

 

“All right, let’s see,” Bucky said once they reached her place. He had her stand by the window, where the light was strongest and tilted her face back and forth as he examined her split lips and the bruises forming on her face. “It’s not so bad this time,” he said, but left his fingertips on the side of her face.

Steph almost closed her eyes to relish the feeling, but stopped herself just in time. “Told you I could have handled it.”

“It’s not so bad cause I got there before he did any real damage,” he said, before finally pulling his hands back. Steph contained the displeasure that gave her. He turned away so he could grab a cloth and the rubbing alcohol off the kitchen counter. Gently, much more gently than anyone else would have expected of Bucky, he dabbed at her split lip and the other cuts on her face.

It stung a little, but Steph didn’t mind. She was used to it. And Bucky was much more gentle than she would have been on herself. Which was maybe one reason she never really stopped trying to get in fights. She knew she could always rely on him to help patch her up afterwards.

“What are you going to do without me?” he said, almost as if he knew what she had been thinking.

Usually, he would joke about how she would be lost without him, and she would respond by saying she could fight her own fights, or that he only got in her way. But this time, it wasn’t a joke. The way he said it now, it was sad. Steph didn’t have the energy to joke either.

“I don’t know…” she admitted.

He wiped the last of the blood off her face and looked down at her, not moving from the spot. She looked up at him, and almost unbidden, the thought that popped into her head was _Maybe this time…_ Though her brain didn’t elaborate on maybe this time what. Neither of them moved for a moment; they just watched each other.

Bucky sighed and planted his hands on her shoulders, effectively breaking whatever moment they were having. “Try to stay out of trouble, okay?”

“Me?” She shrugged out from under his hands. Standing close to him was getting to be too much. “You’re the one who’s…” But she couldn’t finish the sentence. Because when she thought about it, all she saw was every possible way he could die: a bullet, a tank, a mine, a bomb, mustard gas, disease, torture, and on and on. “Please don’t die…” she whispered, really scared for the first time. “You’re all I have…”

“Hey…” he said softly, his blue eyes wide. She never let herself seem vulnerable, so the quiver in her voice took him by surprise. “You know me. It’ll take a lot more than a war to kill me.”

“But it’s a good start.” It was meant to be a joke, but it came out serious.

“I’ll come back,” he said. “Promise. I’m with you to the end of the line, remember?”

She smiled and nodded. “You better. Otherwise I may just have to go over there and get you myself.”

He rolled his eyes. “Still singing that tune? Come on.” He turned her and moved her towards the door out of the kitchen. “Go change into something that doesn’t have stains from your own blood.”

He dropped down onto the raggedy couch in the living room. She stopped at the doorway to her bedroom and turned around to look at him. She didn’t want to go out anymore. She wanted to stay in here, talking to Bucky all night. She wanted to savor every last second she had with him.

He looked over at her. “What?”

Her palms started to sweat, so she shoved them into her pants pockets. It was the last time she was going to see him in a long time. And even if he did come back, he might not come back the same. Her mother told her how a lot of men returned from the last war changed, in a bad way. This might be her last chance to tell him how she felt, even if she knew he would never feel the same about her.

“What are you staring at, Steph?” he asked. “Hurry up. I promised Connie we’d be there at eight.”

Oh. That was why she never told him. How could she forget? “You didn’t tell me you were meeting a girl.”

“Didn’t I?” He shrugged. “Slipped my mind.”

“I’m sure she appreciates that.” Steph turned away and quickly walked into her room, but left it open a bit so she could yell out, “I don’t think girls like that much! Being ignored.”

“Trust me, not planning on ignoring her tonight,” he called back, and she could hear the self-satisfied smirk in his voice.

“Ugh. Please tell me this one doesn’t actually think you love her.” Steph pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the bed. At least she could consul herself with the fact that he didn’t love anyone else either, even though that was little comfort.

“Just looking for a little fun.”

“One of these days, some girl is going to smack you.” She found a shirt that didn’t have blood on the collar and pulled it on, wincing over a bruise on her shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked quickly at the sound. Damn, that boy had good ears.

“Fine!” she called back. “Just found another bruise.”

“And you’re talking about me getting smacked. You’re the one all banged up.”

“I’ll live.” She buttoned the shirt up quickly and pulled on her coat. And then she walked out to the living room. He wasn’t sitting on the couch anymore. He was standing with his back against the opposite wall. When she saw him, she raised an eyebrow.

“Realized I probably shouldn’t get this thing wrinkled,” he said, indicating the army uniform. She shrugged and decided to not to look too much into the reason he had moved as far away from her as possible while they had been talking. She let him lead the way to the expo and tried her best to pretend she was having a good time, even when it turned out Connie brought a friend cause she thought the friend Bucky was bringing would be male. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she used the recruitment center as an excuse to duck away. Maybe this time she would get lucky and actually be able to join him overseas.

 


	4. The Things We Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky remembers an important moment. Steph says something more than seventy years in coming.

Steph was right. He did come back. He never stayed more than a few hours, but he did keep coming back. Now that he wasn’t having his mind wiped repeatedly, memories started coming back in droves. He would come to her to tell her what he remembered and confirm things happened they way he thought they did. The memories were still only bits and pieces, but slowly, the old Bucky was showing through, even though the Winter Soldier was the face she saw. Some nights he didn’t want to talk at all, and she didn’t push him. Instead he wanted to feel. Those night she thought perhaps his body was remembering, instead of his mind. And if he took solace in her embrace, that was fine with her. After, she would hold him in her arms. And when he got up to sneak out, she would pretend to be asleep.

Even though metal replaced warm flesh, and many times blank assassin’s eyes looked at her rather than the blue eyes she had known, the ones that used to be full of so much light and life, it still all felt familiar. They were still meeting in secret. He still left her bed before dawn. It was almost like they had picked up where they had left off.

Steph had completely forgotten about telling Sam, or anyone else for that matter, until he called one evening. “This is Captain Rogers,” she said automatically when she answered, too used to it to change it now.

“Steph,” Sam’s voice said, “I think I have a lead on your boy.”

Steph started in surprised. “Sam.”

“Starting from square one was a good plan. We were totally on the wrong track.”

“Sam.”

“We were focusing too much on Hydra, and not the Soviet conditioning. If we look at that, there are certain places he might have gone to.”

“Sam,” she tried one more time to interrupt him. “I know where he is.”

The line was silent for so long that Steph pulled the phone away from her ear to make sure the call was still connected. “What do you mean you know where he is?” he said at last.

“I’ve seen him,” she said. “He’s in DC, has been the whole time. He’s… he’s been remembering, and coming to me.”

“What? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She shuffled something around on the table. “I’m fine. He hasn’t tried to hurt me. He’s just confused.”

“If he’s coming willingly, you should make him go to a doctor, a professional.”

Steph shook her head, even though it was a ridiculous action. “No, I don’t want to get anyone else involved yet. He’s only been coming at night which means he’s still trying to stay hidden. Whatever’s left of Hydra is probably after him too.”

“He’s dangerous. What’s to stop him from remembering the wrong thing and suddenly snapping? Maybe he’ll remember his mission was to kill you.”

“He remembers, and he hasn’t tried anything. He doesn’t want to hurt me.”

“Maybe he’s lulling you into a false sense of security.”

“If he wanted to kill me, he would have had plenty of opportunities. Trust me.”

Sam was silent for a moment and then said, “Ah, hell. You had sex with him, didn’t you?”

Steph had heard the phrase “Able to fry an egg on someone’s face,” but she never thought it would apply to her. Though in that moment, she swore she turned red enough that you’d be able to fry an egg on her face. “So what if… I mean, that’s none of your…” Steph coughed and tried again. “I’m an adult. I can do as I like. And how could you possibly know that we were a…”

“No one does what you do for just a _friend_. Obviously there was something more.”

Steph sighed and ran her hand through her hair. “Okay. _Yes_. You’re right. But if you thought your lover was dead, and they suddenly reappeared after seventy years, what would you do?”

He ignored her question. “Be careful, Steph. This guy, he’s not the same man. He is dangerous.”

Steph tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “So am I.”

“I assume this is the part where you tell me not to tell anyone. Even Natasha?”

“Yes. The fewer people who know, the better. Don’t worry, if something happens, I’ll tell you.”

“Like how you told me you were seeing him again.”

“If anything _else_ happens, I will tell you. Just… stay alert. The remains of Hydra are probably still searching for all us.”

Sam sighed. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Steph ended the call and looked down at her phone. The conversation didn’t settle right in her gut, but she didn’t feel bad about keeping Bucky’s whereabouts a secret. It might be the only thing keeping him alive.

“Sounds like your friend doesn’t like me.”

Steph turned and smiled at Bucky, who was still standing by the window he had snuck in through. She had heard him come in, but acted like she hadn’t, just in case. He wasn’t as skittish as the first time he came over, but she still wasn’t sure what would set him off. By this point, she always kept Stark’s security system offline, just so he wouldn’t accidentally trip something.

She set her phone on the table and said, “You did kick him off a floating battle ship. After breaking his favorite toy.” She walked over to him and tentatively reached up to brush some of his hair out of his face. He still hadn’t cut it, but occasionally he would shave. This stubble was only about a day old.

Bucky frowned and looked down at her. “It was the mission.”

“I know,” she said. “It was a joke. Don’t worry, that’ll come back to you too.” She took his hand and smiled softly. “Hungry? How much do you eat when you’re not here? I’ve got leftovers I can heat up. And then we can talk.” She looked up into his face. “You remembered something, right?”

He nodded.

“Something bad?” she asked slowly.

“No. Something…” He hesitated.

“Come on.” She tugged on his hand, and he let her pull him away from the window and into the kitchen. “Food first.” She sat him down and quickly went about heating up take-out from the other night. She used a pot, because it was familiar. Natasha had shown her repeatedly how to use a microwave, but she still didn’t completely trust it. She was right about him being hungry. After she set the plate down in front of him, he looked at her for a moment before shoveling food into his mouth.

She sat down beside him and said quietly, “When was the last time you ate?”

Between mouthfuls, he said, “Day before last.”

She hesitated, and then said, “You can come here whenever you want. It doesn’t just have to be when you remember something. You can stay here, even. You’ll be safe here.”

He shook his head, and then went back to the work of clearing the plate. When he was done, he looked at her. “It would be an unnecessary risk for you. Hydra can’t track me if I move around. They will kill you if they find I’m here.”

He was protecting her. Again. He couldn’t even fully remember who he was, but still. He wanted to keep her safe.

“I can turn the security system back on,” she joked. “I don’t think even Hydra would be able to get past Stark.” Bucky looked at her sharply, and she added, “Tony. Tony Stark. Not Howard… I know what happened to Howard.”

“That was me. It was one of my missions.” He looked down.

“I know.” She put her hands on top of his, and he turned his hand to squeeze hers. It was at least an improvement from how unresponsive he had been the first time. “But that… you weren’t you. It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?” She kept holding onto his right hand with one of hers, and with the other one she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair, trying to get him to look at her. “What they made you do, that was Hydra. You, Bucky Barnes, are in control now. Not the Winter Soldier.”

He nodded and looked at her. He turned his head to kiss the inside of her wrist, and closed his eyes briefly. She left her fingers in his hair and smiled softly. He was coming back to her, bit by bit. He would never be completely the same, but then again, she was changed by all her experiences as well, if in less drastic ways.

She squeezed his hand again and said quietly, “What did you remember this time? You said it wasn’t a bad memory.”

He shook his head, and then opened his eyes to look at her. “I remember dancing.”

She blinked in surprised. It was a benign thing to remember, but every bit of himself he recovered helped, she supposed. “That’s not too surprising, all things considered. Before the war, you used to go dancing a lot. There was a point where you were going out with a different pretty girl each week. So which one was in this memory?”

He looked at her and said, “You.”

Steph frowned. “But we never went out dancing together. Was I there, but you were dancing with another girl? Unless…” She drew in a breath sharply. “You didn’t say you remembered going _out_ dancing. You remembered _dancing_.” He nodded, but didn’t say anything. “You remembered that night when the two of us danced in my room, in London.” She squeezed his hand tightly and looked down. She hadn’t expected this one to come back so soon. He hardly remembered anything from their time together during the war. It was mostly things from after they found him, or when they were growing up in Brooklyn.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, turning so he could face her. The concern was apparent in his voice. “Did I do something wrong?”

She shook her head quickly, but continued to look down. “No, No. It’s just…” She couldn’t believe she was getting choked up about this, but thinking about it, knowing he remembered that night too, brought back all the emotions she had felt over seventy years ago. She looked at him and smiled. “That’s one of my favorite memories of us.” She squeezed both his hands in hers, holding them over his lap. “How much do you remember?”

His eyes went back and forth across her face, but he didn’t commit to any expression, not yet. “There was a radio. You said you’d never danced. So I decided to show you how. We danced for a few minutes, and then you said… you said…”

“I said everything was perfect…” she finished for him, something she tried not to do, as she would rather he remember on his own. But this time she couldn’t help herself.

“Yeah.” He looked at her and tilted his head slightly. “Why was that moment perfect? From what I can tell of dancing, that hadn’t been a very good one.”

Steph smiled and then leaned forward in her seat so she could gently press her lips against his. She sat back and looked at him again. “Because it was with you. I had watched you dance with other girls countless times before that. But that moment was the first time you had asked me to dance. It was the only time we got to dance together.”

He watched her face for a moment. “I only remember the moment. Not what I was thinking. Or how to dance.”

“I can show you.” She stood up and pulled him to his feet as well. Then she went to her bookshelf and rummaged through a box of records until she came up with the one she wanted. She turned on the record player and carefully set the vinyl on the turntable. She preferred the old ways, and thought music sounded better like this, than out of one of those digital music devices. A jazzy old song started up and she turned to hold out her hand to him. “Dance with me,” she said.

He tentatively walked over, but when he stood in front of her, he was unsure what to do next. So she took his hands, and placed one on her hip, holding the other. She settled her other hand on his shoulder and took a step closer so their bodies were practically touching. “Usually the guy leads. Or at least, that’s how things were done then. You do not want to see what dancing looks like in this century.” She took a step back, and he took a step forward. “Good,” she said. “Now the other way.” She took a step forward and he took a step back. “It’s not complicated if you just follow where I lead.” She moved again and he moved with her, and soon they were waltzing around her living room.

About halfway through the song, he suddenly took the lead, and she didn’t try to fight him for it. She thought maybe muscle memory was taking over. He moved the hand at her hip around her waist and pulled her body closer to his, able to keep better time with the music than during their first dance. They kept on dancing until the song ended and the needle skipped on the record. The only things that came out were amplified scratches and bumps, but Bucky spun her around anyway. He stopped after another minute and looked down at her.

“I should turn that off…” she said quietly. The sun had set in the time since he had arrived, and she hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights, so they had finished their dance in the dark. He continued to look down at her, but then he dropped his arms and let her walk around him to turn off the record player. When she had her back to him, she took a deep, shaky breath, almost overcome by the old memory, the way that Bucky had smiled at her, the unadulterated affection in his eyes. This Bucky was still trying to decide what he wanted. He was still confused.

She slipped the record back into its sleeve and returned it to the box with the others. When she turned back around, he was directly in front of her. He put his hands on the bookshelf on either side of her shoulders, not necessarily pinning her, but keeping her in place. She looked up at him calmly. He wasn’t being aggressive and he hadn’t tried to touch her, but clearly something was troubling him.

“You’re unhappy,” he observed.

“More like melancholy,” she said. “Nostalgic.”

“Why?” He set his steady gaze on her face.

“I told you. That’s one of my favorite memories of us.” She reached up and gently placed her hands on his face. “I never thought I would get the chance to dance with you again.”

“Then why are you sad?” He didn’t move from his spot.

“Our relationship. Everything we could have had, but didn’t. Everything that was stolen from us. Everything I held back, even then. I never told you…” She looked into his eyes. “It might be asking a lot, but do you remember our last night together in London, before you… before the train…?” His arms went slack and then dropped to his sides, but he didn’t move away from her. She traced his cheekbone with the pad of her thumb. “There was something I almost said. Something I kept trying to tell you. But you stopped me. You said--”

“I said ‘I know.’”

She nodded, and moved closer, just a bit. “Yes.”

“But I don’t remember what it is I thought I knew.”

Steph smiled and leaned up to place another gentle kiss against his lips. She pulled back, and dropped one hand to his shoulder, the other she kept on his face. “That I love you.” Seventy years later, and the words finally came easily. “I still love you. I never stopped loving you, even when I thought you were dead. Even when I woke up in this century and thought I had lost everything. I have loved you since before I knew that I did, and before I even knew what love was. I loved you from the moment you helped pick me up off the ground. I loved you when you had to explain a bloody nose and black eye to your mother because you couldn’t let me get beaten up alone. I loved you when I thought you would never reciprocate it. I loved you when you taught me to dance, and every moment of the war. I kept loving you even when I thought I had lost you forever. You’re the only man I have ever loved.”

He smiled, a shadow of his smirk. “Hard to follow something like that.” The smile slipped off his face and he looked down at her seriously. “Me too. Always. I love you.”

She smiled happily. “Then that’s enough. No matter what. That’s enough.” She leaned up and kissed him again, tilting her head slightly so their lips fit together perfectly. She kept their lips close, and her body pressed against his as she whispered, “You don’t have to do anything else. Just love me. I want you,” she kissed the side of his mouth, “and you,” and his temple, “and nothing but you,” and over his eyes. She slowly kissed along his face, taking her time. “Only you.”

“ _Steph_ …” he said quietly and slipped both arms around her waist to pull her against his chest.

She slid her arms around his neck and tangled her fingers in his hair at the back of his head as she pulled it close so she could kiss him again. His hands at her back slowly started to pull the back of her shirt up. She felt warm, flesh fingers and the slightly cooler, metal ones run along her bare skin. He traced his fingertips up her spine and a shiver went through her body.

She pulled back slightly so she could smile at him. “Come on.” She took his hands and pulled him to her bedroom. She had to admit, she never got tired of this part. Instead of being desperate to touch everywhere, both with hands and lips, they instead gazed into each others’ faces. Steph came with their foreheads pressed together, and his hand in her hair. They stayed like that for a moment, trying to catch their breath. She closed her eyes and whispered, “I love you…”

He wrapped his arms around her even though both of them were covered in a light sheen of sweat. She still sat on her knees, straddling his hips, with her hands on his chest. His breath tickled her ear. “And I love you…” he said. “Steph. My Steph.”

She nodded, and felt the sweet pull of sleep start to take her. She was spent, physically and emotionally. It seemed like everything had changed. It didn’t matter that he bore the scars of his past, because he _loved_ her. Even through a fog of uncertain memories, he still loved her. She finally had him back. He wasn’t exactly the same old Bucky, but he would always be her Bucky. And she would always be his. His Steph. For the first time since they had started sleeping together again, she was the one who fell asleep wrapped up in his arms. Happy.

 

But when she woke up a few hours later, still early enough in the middle of the night that the pink edges of dawn hadn’t started to lighten the world outside, she was alone in the bed. He still hadn’t stayed with her. It was too dangerous.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter could also be called, "The One Where I Quote the Most Obscure Things." You get major points if you can find my references to two of my favorite things, "The Last 5 Years" and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."
> 
> Also, here is the proof that I'm actually just a great big sap.


	5. Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky has to protect this girl. After the missions, it is all he has left. And sometimes he has to protect her from himself.

He wanted to stay. Every night that he came by, he wanted to stay with her. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. So instead he always left while she was sleeping. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand the way she looked at him as he tried to leave. And if she asked him to stay, he would. So he never let that be an option. Sometimes he would watch her sleep, after he had pulled all his clothes on. He never touched her though, no matter how much he wanted to. There was no telling what would wake a soldier. He was also afraid if he gave in to her warmth, he wouldn’t want to leave. So he would stare down at her face, and then sneak out through the window while it was still dark.

It was true there were men looking for him, but that wasn’t the only reason he left. It was because of the nightmares.

The most basic thought, the most fundamental desire he had was to protect Steph. It was ingrained in him so deep that even Soviet mind wipes and the programming they stuffed into his head to replace what they’d pulled out could never cover it up completely. Even when he couldn’t remember who she was, all he could think was, _I have to save this girl_. It completely contradicted his mission, but he did it anyway. She hardly needed his protection, or constant supervision. _Not like she used to._

These thoughts would pop into his mind and he didn’t know where they came from. Occasionally he would get pieces, like watching a much smaller version of the girl get punched down to the concrete, only to look up defiantly at her attacker. One time the image came to him of one of his hands on her shoulder and the other (still made of skin and muscle and bone) holding her arm, trying to keep her steady as she desperately tried to breathe. She clutched at his shirt like it was a lifeline. It was an image, and it disappeared as quickly as it came without any other emotions attached to it. But he knew one thing, it always came with the overwhelming desire to keep her safe.

The biggest threat to her now wasn’t Hydra, even though they tried. Anyone who got too close, he would take out. Luckily, that hadn’t lead back to him yet. With the friends she now kept around her, he imagined the Hydra Strike teams must have always put the kill down as her work. But even if he didn’t intervene, he knew they wouldn’t kill her. No, the biggest threat to her was in fact him. Because she trusted him completely. So the last thing he wanted was to be around her when he had a nightmare. If he had an episode while she was nearby, he might hurt her, or worse kill her.

So he would stay with her as long as he dared, before sneaking out. But it got harder the more times he went over. She was soft skin over hard muscles, and the way she said his name like a prayer every time they came together was enough to make him never want to leave. Even those times when they talked and talked as he tried to recall every detail of the latest memory that had come back to him, until she could barely keep her eyes open. Even then it was hard to leave. It was especially hard when she ran her fingers through his hair and looked at him with so much affection that he thought he would fall apart, just listening to her whisper over and over again, “ _I love you… I love you… I love you…_ ” like she couldn’t say it enough.

After two weeks without nightmares, he started taking more of a chance. He stayed longer, and sometimes fell asleep for an hour or two in the too-soft bed, instead leaving closer and closer to dawn. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. It was a stupid risk he should never have taken, and sure enough, he paid the price.

 

There were blinding lights. This one was different. They knew he was coming. He had to finish the mission and get out. Finish it and get out. Finish it and get out. Finish it and get out. Finish it--

Something exploded near him. He moved on instinct. Where was the target? The target was all that mattered. And getting back. His handlers would be very angry with him if he didn’t get back. That was very, very important. He was an asset.

He tried to pull a gun out, but found he wasn’t carrying one. Instead he slipped a knife out of his boot and slashed it where he thought a person had been. But it was all smoke. And then the knife was gone too. He fumbled for any kind of weapon. How could he complete his mission without a weapon?

_Bucky..._

He was falling. It was cold, and the pain on his left was enough to make his head explode. There was a name on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t remember it. He had to remember it. It was crucial he remember. But the ice was getting in where only his thoughts used to live and he was powerless to push them out.

_Bucky..._

He still had his arm. That was a weapon. Whoever stood in his way, he could take down. No one could stop the sheer force behind the metal attached to his very skin.

_Bucky…_

Finish it and get out. Finish it and get out. Even if he had to crush the life out of his target, he would complete his mission. His mission was the only thing that mattered. It was the only reason he existed, and it was the only time he came out of the cold.

_Bucky!_

The very real sensation of human flesh under his metal hand came to him. He was no longer chasing shadows or shooting at smoke. He had found his target. So he squeezed down on the fragile neck trapped under his fingers.

And then he saw the face. For a moment, it was the face of the scrawny girl and she was desperately gasping for breath, begging him with her eyes to help her. She couldn’t breathe and he had to help her, because he was the only person she had. But he was always so powerless to help her. If only he could just make her _breathe_. And then his vision cleared and he realized, no, she wasn’t scrawny anymore. She was using all of her strength to try to pry his fingers away from her neck as she kicked her bare feet at the wall and at his chest.

_Bucky…_ the word formed on her lips but she couldn’t get it out.

“Steph!” he cried out in surprise and yanked his metal arm away from her, stumbling back until his legs bumped against the edge of the bed.

She collapsed to the ground and hacked and wheezed as she rubbed at her throat. There was a very dark bruise on her neck in the shape of his hand. And he did that to her. He did that to her.

“B-Bucky…” she said hoarsely, which only made her wince and cough louder. “Are you okay…?”

God damn stupid girl. How could she possibly ask him that when he had just… when he almost… He ran both hands through his hair and sank down to the floor.

“Bucky…” she said, not more than a whisper, her voice completely shot. “It’s okay… You’re safe here.”

“I _hurt_ you,” he said roughly.

“I have survived much worse than this,” she said, though clearly the effort hurt a great deal. “Are you okay…?” she whispered again. “Do you know where you are?”

He nodded. “I am in Washington, DC. I’m in your apartment. You are Captain Stephany Grace Rogers. I am James Buchanan Barnes.” He recited it like a mantra, something that would keep him grounded.

She nodded and then moved to her hands and knees so she could pull herself over to him. So he jumped up and backed against the opposite wall. “Stay away.” The sad look in her eyes broke his heart. “I may hurt you again”

She stopped and sat up straight, with her hands folded in her lap and her ankles tucked underneath her. The black and blue bruise on her neck radiated at him like a neon sign of his failure. “Do you want to hurt me?” she asked in her hoarse whisper.

“No, of course not! That’s why you have to stay away. I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Does this happen a lot?” she asked calmly.

“Less than at the beginning. That’s why I can’t be around you.”

“Maybe…” She licked her dry lips and he could tell she was trying very hard to soldier through the pain. “Maybe what you need is someone close by, to wake you up.”

“I could have killed you!” he yelled at her.

“But you didn’t. You came to. And it’s better that it was me than anyone else because I can handle it. You’ve taken care of me all my life, Bucky. Let me help you.”

He saw the asthmatic girl clutching at his arm, but trusting him completely to see her through the attack. He wondered if he could do the same, trust her to see him through these attacks.

“Bucky,” she said again as she held out her arm, “at least come help me up.”

He walked over mechanically and pulled her to her feet with his right hand. He kept the metal arm well away from her. She placed one hand against his bare chest to steady herself while the other rubbed at the bruise of her neck again. She smiled up at him in thanks, and then walked out of the bedroom and to the kitchen. The long T-shirt she wore swished around her thighs as she walked.

He watched her from the doorway. Every instinct he had told him to get the hell out of there. That he had done damage and needed to leave before he made it worse. But that deep-rooted thought, at the back of his mind, that made him want to protect this girl, would not let him go. It told him she was in pain and he had to do whatever he could to help.

He watched as she filled a bag with ice cubes and tenderly placed it to her neck. She bit her lip hard as she did so, clearly in a lot of pain.

_“Steph, breathe for me. You can do it. I’m here for you. I’ve got you. Just breathe.”_

Without planning to, he walked over to where she stood in the kitchen. She looked up at him when he came closer, but it wasn’t a cautious look, or nervous. She had such an open and honest face and suspicion never had come to her naturally. She still trusted him, and her expression said that.

“Let me…” he said and reached out to take the bag of ice. She didn’t resist, and let her hand drop to her side. He maneuvered the pack to the worst of the bruise and she blew out a labored breath between clenched teeth.

“‘s cold…” she said for explanation and closed her eyes. After a moment the pain eased off her face. The pack was cold on his hand, but he didn’t mind. No cold could ever match the deep freezes he had repeatedly been put through. When he pulled back the ice, her skin was red, but the bruise had already started to fade, thanks to the serum.

“I’m sorry…” he whispered, with as much sincerity as he could manage.

Her eyes blinked open and she looked at him for a moment. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s those bastard who did this to you.” She put her hand on top of his forearm, which was still raised slightly, holding onto the dripping bag of ice. “I’m sorry you have had to suffer through these… nightmares by yourself.”

“You see what happens if I’m around other people.”

She nodded a bit stiffly, probably from the numbing effects of the ice. “I will find some way to help you. You don’t have to do this alone. I’m with you, always.”

_“I will find some way to help you.”_

_“Bucky. You know I can’t afford any of the medications the doctors recommend. I can barely afford the doctor!”_

_“That’s why I’m here. I’m with you, always.”_

He swallowed down the memory. Not for the first time, he wondered if she chose her words carefully to see if they would awaken old memories, or if that was just the way she talked, because that was the way they used to talk.

“What?” she asked.

“I used to… worry about you like this. Try to take care of you.”

She smiled. He remembered trying to make her smile a lot, when they were younger. When they were growing up, she spent so much time fighting everyone that she rarely smiled, not a real smile, at least. But she smiled for him, when they were alone.

“Yes you did. And now it’s my turn. I’ll help you get past these nightmares. Or at least…” She took a step closer, barely a breath away from him, “I want to be here so you don’t have to wake up alone. I promise you won’t catch me off guard like that again.”

It was tempting, very tempting to give in and just stay with her. The problem was Bucky had never been a man who gave in easily, to anything. And this was no exception. He shook his head and moved around her so he could set the bag of ice in the sink. “It’s too dangerous. I can get through this on my own.”

“The thing is…” Steph said quietly from behind him. He looked over at her and she smiled again, weakly. “You don’t have to.” She walked over and slipped her arms around his waist from behind and rested her forehead on his shoulder. “To the end of the line…” she whispered. “Remember?”

He gently set his flesh hand on top of hers. “I remember…”

“Let me help you, please. We’ve always done things together. We’re better together.”

He turned around and she kept her hands on his hips, just above the waistband of his pants. “You make it sound so easy. But I could hurt you again. I could kill you.”

She shrugged one shoulder, half of a smile on her face. “I’m Captain America. If you haven’t noticed by now, it’s pretty hard to kill me.”

“Steph…”

“I’m not going to just sit back and do the safe thing.” She slide her hands up his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck. Without thinking about it, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. It was amazing how natural this felt now. They had always seemed to fit perfectly together, no matter how much each of them had changed physically. He remembered wanting this when she had been smaller, but being too afraid to try. He remembered after she became strong, no longer needing to cling to him, but she let him wrap his arms around her anyway. Because she wanted him. She could suddenly have anything and she wanted him. And she still wanted him now, even though keeping him around meant keeping the Winter Soldier around.

“You’ve always been stubborn.”

“Well… you know me…” She moved closer until they were only a breath away, and then he closed the rest of the gap and pressed his lips to hers fiercely.

“You crazy… stupid girl…” He kissed her again and spun her around to push her against the counter.

“Wouldn’t want me…” She kisses along his face and pulled him closer to kiss him deeply “any other way, would you?”

“Never…” He hoisted her onto the counter and moved between her legs.

“Good.” She leaned down and kissed him again.

He decided to let her win, at least for that night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the obligatory Bucky-has-a-nightmare-and-tries-to-kill-someone chapter. And oh look! It's from Bucky's POV.


	6. This Night and Every Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steph and Bucky celebrate a successful mission.
> 
> AKA I finally wrote teh pron.

“Here’s to taking out another Hydra factory.” Dum Dum raised a mug of beer and the others followed suit. “And to Cap for taking down one of those fuckin’ tanks!”

Steph smiled, but didn’t take part in the drinking. She had never really had a taste for beer, and she figured if the rest of her men were going to get drunk, she at least would have to stay sober. The others cheered and clinked glasses together before downing their drinks. Dum Dum would always celebrate the completion of a successful mission by dragging them all to the bar, usually because he had managed to make a bet with one of the other Howling Commandoes so that they would have to treat everyone to drinks that night. This time he had managed to con Morita into paying, and he was taking full advantage.

She caught Bucky’s eye and he smirked at her over the top of his glass. He usually only had one or two beers even if the others got stupendously drunk. After all, they liked to know what they were doing while they celebrated in their own way. No one noticed the look they exchanged, too busy seeing who could finish their first drink first.

“Think the Red Skull’s pissing himself yet?” Dum Dum asked. “He’s only got his mysterious hidden main Hydra base now.”

“The war is not over yet,” Falsworth cautioned. “But yes, I imagine we have them running scared.”

“You all did good work today,” Steph said. “It’s only a matter of time before we take Hydra down completely.”

“I’ll drink to that!”

Steph let them have round after round, though she did keep her eye on the fact that Bucky made one drink look like three, and that he was actually still quite sober while the others were on their way to nasty hangovers in the morning.

“Okay, punks,” Bucky said as he stood. He finished the last of his beer in one gulp and set the mug down. “I covered your asses all day. I am going to sleep for more than two hours.”

There was a chorus of “Night” from the other men. Right before Bucky walked out, he caught Steph’s eye again, with his trademark smirk on his face. It was the kind of smirk that meant the next ten minutes would be agony while she waited to leave the bar so it wouldn’t seem like she was following him.

As usual, no one noticed a thing. Steph joined in on the drunken songs, and laughed with all the jokes that she was sure seemed much funnier to everyone else, while her mind was ten minutes in the future.

Eventually, when she thought enough time had passed that it wouldn’t seem suspicious, and when she just couldn’t take it anymore, she said, “I’m going to call it a night. Try not to drink too much. Remember you’ll regret it in the morning when you all have wicked hangovers.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Dum Dum said as he raised his glass.

Steph smiled and bid them goodnight and tried her very best not to run all the way back to her room. She kept her pace no faster than a leisurely walk, and slouched like she was absolutely tired and all she wanted to do was sleep, for the benefit of any passersby. When she got to her room, she double-checked to make sure no one was nearby before opening the door quietly and stepping in.

Bucky was laying on her bed with his hands behind his head and his legs crossed over each other at the ankles. He smirked and sat up when he saw her. She closed the door gently behind herself and leaned back against it.

“I don’t believe this is your room, Sergeant,” she said playfully.

“No, you see, I’m here on Captain’s orders,” he said, the smirk still on his face. He got up and walked across the room to her.

“And what orders would those be?” she asked, trying to keep the amusement out of her voice.

“The look she gave me, of course.” He placed his hands on the back of the door on either side of her head and leaned in close to her. “That said ‘You better be in my bed when I got back to my room.’”

“You forgot part where you’re still wearing too much clothing.” She hooked her fingers in the belt loops of his pants and pulled him closer.

“Must’ve missed that part,” he said. “Maybe you should have said it out loud.”

“Bucky…” She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him close to kiss him hard.

He pressed her against the back of the door as he kissed her back, and didn’t waste any time to start exploring her mouth with his tongue.

Likewise, she didn’t waste any time unbuttoning the brass buttons on the front of his double-breasted coat, trying her best not to just tear them off. They had all gone straight to the bar still in their uniforms, so she was also still wearing her muted stars and stripes. Though she had pulled the zipper down to her collar bone so she had room to breathe. It was only necessary to keep her neck protected during missions. And that made it all the easier for him to find the zipper and pull it along the hidden seam under the various straps and belts criss-crossing her body, until he was able to push it off her shoulders and reveal bare arms and a thin shirt. And she had only barely managed to unbutton his coat. So she eagerly tore it off and ran her hands up his chest and pulled him in closer, finally able to feel body heat now that they weren’t covered in layers of clothing.

His fingers went to the bottom of her undershirt and he started to slide it up as he moved to kiss her neck. When she decided that was still too slow, she reached around and pulled the shirt off herself, and almost shivered when her body was exposed to the air. But she wasn’t cold for long, because his wandering hands cupped her breasts and he leaned down to suck one already-hard nipple into his mouth. Steph moaned and returned her hand to the back of his head, sliding her fingers through the short hair at the back of his neck.

“Shh…” he whispered against her skin. “I know I’m good,” he joked, clearly pleased with himself, “but you’re the one who always says we have to be quiet.”

“Shut up, jerk,” she whispered back. “Maybe they’ll just think I’m having fun by myself.”

“Not so sure I want anyone else listening to that.” He bit down on one nipple, but not too hard, just enough to send a shock straight from her chest to her groin.

“Who knew you had a possessive streak…” She hiked up the back of his shirt and then managed to pull it over his head when he looked up to say something again.

He looked annoyed at the interruption, but then continued, “It’s all what you bring out in me.” He went back to tracing her chest and torso with his tongue and teeth and lips, letting his fingers follow in their wake. She ran her fingers through his hair eagerly, because he always did know what to do to make her feel so good. When he reached her belt, he quickly unbuckled it and pulled her pants and underwear down in one swift motion.

Steph didn’t even have the chance to react to that, because then he was using his _very_ talented tongue (at least in her opinion) to lick her opening and her clit. She had to bite her lip hard to keep from making any more noises, but she still stuttered out, “Bu-Bucky…!” and gripped his hair, or as much as she could considering how short it was.

For once, he didn’t say anything, and Steph appreciated that fact greatly, because he put his mouth to much better use instead. He gripped the hard musculature of her thigh with one hand to pull her legs slightly farther apart, and then the other palm roamed up her stomach, holding her still while he cleaned her out. She let her head thunk back and knew the only reason she was still standing was because she was leaning against the door. Her legs had gone to jelly and she could feel something building, like a wave rising, at the point just before it crests and crashes down. When she was right on the edge, he pulled back suddenly, and decided that was the perfect time to lay love-bites along her thigh.

“Oh, you asshole...” she hissed out, her body still taut and on edge.

He chuckled against her skin. “Like this is news to anyone.” He leaned back on his heels to smirk up at her, and then he rose to his feet in one fluid motion. He slid his hand up along her arm and pinned her wrist to the door above her head. The other hand migrated down her smooth stomach and stroked her gently between her legs, before sliding one finger in.

She let out a breath and wrapped the fingers of her free hand around the back of his neck to pull him close. He licked her neck and left a trail of saliva up to her ear before latching his teeth onto her earlobe. He added another finger, gliding them in and out of her, and then scissoring them back and forth.

To keep herself from moaning, she yanked his head up again and pulled him back to her mouth. She could taste herself on his lips and that only turned her on more, along with how he was working her. When she felt her orgasm building again and had to pull back to breathe, she kept his head close and pressed their foreheads together. The wave finally broke, and she barely managed to stay standing on shaky legs as she rode through the pleasure surging through her body. He let go of his wrist so he could wrap his arm around her waist to hold her up, but he kept their foreheads together.

After a moment, Steph was able to catch her breath again, and she looped her other hand around his neck and laced her fingers together, holding onto him loosely. “You are not allowed to say anything stupid right now…” she said quietly, trying to head him off from some kind of witty remark.

“Okay,” he said and then leaned in to kiss her softly, but she could feel the smirk under her lips. “But I would just like to point out that doing that against the door, arguably the weakest point where sound can carry out of this room, was probably not our brightest idea.”

Steph laughed quietly, and that was when she realized she was standing there practically naked, with her pants caught around her ankles, and Bucky still had his pants on. So shoved him back towards the bed and struggled out of her clothes, after finally getting her boots off. Then she leapt on top of him and straddled his hips, pressing him down to the bed. She enjoyed having her super soldier strength when it allowed her to pull his belt out of every belt loop on his pants in one swift motion. She tossed it over her shoulder and it landed on the floor with a clatter and clunk. He helped kick his boots off so she could yank off the rest of his clothes and drop them over the side of the bed. When she was done, she sat up on her knees and looked down at him triumphantly. He smiled up at her and ran his fingertips up the the fronts and sides of her thighs gently.

All she wanted was to sink down onto him and ride him hard, but they were only allowed one stupid risk per night, especially when they weren’t supposed to be taking any. Instead, she carefully sat back on his thighs and took him in both hands. As she started to stroke him, she said softly, “I don’t think I thanked you yet for taking out that Hydra agent that was trying to shoot me.”

He closed his eyes, enjoying her ministrations. “Thought you said we don’t talk about out there in here and we don’t talk about in here out there.”

“Still.” She added pressure and slid her hands up and down faster. “I wanted to thank you.”

He made a noise that sounded halfway between a snort and a laugh, but got stuck on the way out because he had started breathing harder from her actions. “Like a faceless minion would’ve been able to take out Captain America.”

She leaned down and licked up his length, but let her hands keep up their rhythm. “You’ve been covering my ass all my life, Bucky. I’m only here cause of you. And I don’t thank you as much as I should.”

He groaned and tilted his head back. “Never needed to thank me. And you saved my life too. So I’m pretty sure we’re even.”

“For now.” She leaned over him and kissed him. She kept stroking him as she reached into the bedside table and dug under a sketchpad and some books until she found the gum tin where they hid their stash of condoms. She unrolled one down over him and then finally sank down onto him, taking him in completely and letting out a happy sigh from the pleasant feeling of fullness.

He slid his hands up to her hips to guide her as she started to move on top of him. After letting her dictate the pace for a bit, he sat up and moved one hand to her lower back so he could take control of the pace. She happily wrapped her legs around his waist, and pulled him close with one hand in his hair and the other on his back. The kiss they shared was sloppy because both of them were breathing hard and trying not to make too much noise. Instead, Steph trailed kisses over Bucky’s nose and eyes and along the side of his face.

“I…” _I love you…_ “Bucky… faster…” They were pressed as close together as they possibly could be, which was just the way she liked it. She wanted to feel all his warm skin pressed against her, everything that said this was happening, this was real.

She clenched down on him and felt him shudder in response. “God, Steph…” His fingers dug into her skin in a way that would have bruised her is she were still the scrawny girl she had been. He kissed her hard and without mercy, taking full control. His hand moved between them and he reached down to rub at her clit, though it was lacking the earlier finesse. But it was still enough to send her over. She clenched down on him as another orgasm rocked through her and a moment later, he came to, still holding her close and kissing her fiercely.

They stayed like that for a while longer, just catching their breath and exchanging lazy kisses. When they finally pulled apart, Bucky said, “You are so god damn gorgeous, completely incredible,” his voice full of quiet passion.

He always said something along those lines afterwards, and Steph liked to think it was his way of saying he loved her. Or perhaps he was making up for all the times he hadn’t said it when they were living in Brooklyn, all those missed opportunities and wasted chances when they could have been together, when they _should_ have been together. The first couple of times, she protested, but then she realized it didn’t matter if she denied it, because he believed it wholeheartedly. So instead, she leaned forward and kissed him tiredly, her way of saying _I love you too_.

After they cleaned up and found a few pieces of clothing to stave off the chill that always seemed to seep in through the walls, she curled up with him and enjoyed the feeling of being wrapped up in each others’ arms while they could. Because she knew it was all borrowed time. In the morning they would have to appear as nothing more than friends and comrades-in-arms, and they would discuss the next plan of attack, and how they were going to find the main Hydra base. They would have to be Captain America and Sergeant Barnes. But in here, at least until dawn, they were just Steph and Bucky.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually called this chapter "Teh Pron" while I was writing it and then realized I had to come up with an actual chapter title. 
> 
> While I totally enjoy reading explicit stuff, I don't write it much, so I apologize if it's awkward or not very good.


	7. Nothing but the Dead and Dying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morbid curiosity drags Steph to see her grave in Washington, DC. But what she finds is something she never expected.

Steph went to Washington, DC a month after she woke up from the ice. Manhattan seemed like a good place to settle. When Fury told her that she was standing in Times Square, with all that light. It was hard to believe. It looked nothing like the Times Square she remembered, and nothing like the New York she had left. It had become a place people actually wanted to go. So rather than wander too far or return to Brooklyn (too hard, too many memories) she got a place in Manhattan. Even if she spent most her nights punching a bag in the basement of a gym.

When she read the files and found out there was a grave for her at Arlington, morbid curiosity made her take the train to DC. One would think that the last place she would want to see was her grave. But for some reason, she did want to see it. Living in this new century was like wandering around an alien planet. Every now and then she would see a building that she remembered, even if it had some changes. But it would always be surrounded by so much _new_. Even the people were different. Steph had never really thought of people as a group changing, but she had always watched it year by year before. Now she had skipped seventy, and suddenly people looked different. They dressed different. They talked different. They had different hair and different bodies. They were still people. But. She couldn’t relate to anything.

So the trip to her grave was to find something from the past. Something unchanged and unchanging. The white marble buildings in the capital were the same as when she had last seen them when Senator Brandt had brought her there during her tour of performances. That was comforting at least. But there were so many memorials. On her way to the cemetery, she stopped at the Lincoln Memorial, and the war memorials that surrounded it. She walked around the Reflecting Pool slowly, trying to stay unnoticed by the throngs of tourists.

Steph stopped in front of the World War II Memorial and just stared. It was strange looking at a memorial for something she felt like she had just been fighting. She _had_ just been fighting it. It was only a month ago for her. She had been in the middle of the war. The jarring thing wasn’t so much finding out they had won, but seeing how this was _old news_ for everyone.

And there had been so many wars since then. So many people had died. She walked back around the other side of the Reflecting Pool. There were other wars people had to pay tribute to. Europe had seemed like the biggest battle ground there ever could be. But now she was learning people had gone to Vietnam and Korea. Places she had never heard of before waking up in this century. She liked the dedication to those who lost their lives in Vietnam best, if anyone could really like such a thing.

Steph stood back from the black wall and watched other tourists approach it and look on in awe, or wonder, or sadness, or boredom (more often those were school children). She watched the people who would wait until the other tourists had wandered off towards the giant statue of Lincoln, before stepping up to the wall and laying a flower at its base. Or perhaps it was a small American flag, or a wreath.

Steph finally walked away when she couldn’t watch anymore. This wasn’t her war, but it hurt all the same. It wasn’t like she had thought her war was the war to end all wars. They had said that about the Great War too. Or at least that was what everyone told them when she was growing up. All she knew was that she had to fight for everything as soon as she became a teenager, and the Great War had seemed so far away. And then there was another war. Another _world_ war. And all she wanted to do was fight.

She lingered around these monuments longer than she had intended. So it was late in the day by the time she finally crossed the river to the cemetery. There were so many graves, and more monuments. Was the nation’s capital only the land of the dead?

She watched the soldiers guarding a the Tomb of the Unknown. She saw so many graves and so many tombs, and all the people who had died. People the country honored. The place was massive, but it wasn’t hard to find her tomb. Captain America had a monument too. Steph pulled her baseball cap lower over her face as she approached it. Even here, there were visitors. People wanted to leave tokens for Captain America, even seventy years later.

Officially, she was still dead. Despite her little outbreak when she first woke up, Fury was still trying to figure out the best way to reveal that she was back. So to the rest of the world, this was still a monument to a fallen World War II hero.

Steph hated it.

She didn’t really know what to expect when she had gone looking for her own grave. There was a statue of her, looking so damn heroic, so damn American. But she had only been Captain America for a few years. Most of her life she had been scrawny little Stephany Rogers, completely forgettable. Completely forgotten.

She sighed and walked around the back of the monument, just trying to get away from the few people still there. What she saw took her completely by surprise. The large pedestal her statue stood on had a separate memorial and inscription on the backside. It was to the Howling Commandos. _Her_ Howling Commandos. She hadn’t expected this, but was so happy it was here. None of them were left; she had read that in the files. And all of their names were inscribed there. Name, birth, death, final resting place. She leaned down and trailed her fingers over each one.

It was only when she got to the bottom that she noticed it wasn’t just a dedication. It was another grave, just as hers was around the front. Exactly as hers was around the front. Because this one was empty too. They had never found either of their bodies.

Steph sank to her knees because she didn’t think her legs would be able to support her weight. Gravity seemed too crushing in that moment, super soldier serum or no. She stared at the name etched into the marble and then reached out with shaky fingers and touched it.

“Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes…” she read, almost surprising herself with the sound of her own voice. “Born 1917… Killed in Action… 1944…” There was a fancy memorial above the name, something about fallen in the line of duty… only Howling Commando… but Steph’s eyes glazed over it. Under his name was only one word.

_Friend._

“Thank you, Peggy…” Steph whispered, and could barely get out the last syllable as a sob escaped her throat.

She pulled the cap low against her eyes and leaned her head against the marble. Small sobs and hiccups came in succession, and before she knew it, thick tears were streaming down her face. It was so much worse than that night in the bar. She had cried. She had tried to get drunk. But this. This tearing, awful sobbing that came out of her, this was so much more. She hoped no one was still lingering around the front of the monument, admiring the tribute to _brave_ Captain America, but at the same time she didn’t care. She placed both palms against the marble and didn’t try to stop herself from crying, or sobbing. Big, loud, wet sobs.

“B-Bucky…” she wailed, though she tried to keep quiet, since she was, after all, in a cemetery. She couldn’t be the only one in pain here. “Oh god… Please don’t be gone…” It was still 1944. She was still clinging to that train, just staying there even after Bucky had long since disappeared from view. She was weak and scared and she couldn’t possibly possibly go on. How the hell was she supposed to fight without Bucky at her side? Every fight she had ever won was because Bucky had backed her up. The whole reason she had finally got into the war was because she wanted to save him. She wanted to save him at the cost of severe military punishment. She had found him. If she had been a day later, it would have been too late, but she had _found_ him. What kind of justice was there if he was still taken away from her? While covering her back.

This wasn’t the first time she had thought about that day on the train, about watching Bucky fall, since she woke up from the ice. She had thought about it plenty. She thought about it every time she flipped through the files of the other deceased (stamped in large red letters) Commandoes. She thought about it when she sketched the city as she remembered it, going off of only how it looked now. She thought about it when she saw the Brooklyn bridge. She thought about him every day, because how could she not? She had been so desperately in love with him, and oh god, oh god, she never even told him that. And she lost her chance along with a few scraps of busted metal.

What made this particularly painful, and made her sob until she was sure there couldn’t be any tears left, was that the grave looked so _old_. Hers was the only fresh grief here. James Barnes was only a Sergeant, Captain America’s right-hand man, who had died in a war that had happened several wars ago. It was old history. Certainly the upkeep on the tomb was good, but it still was a monument more than half a century old.

After a few more hiccups, the last of the sobs seemed the die down. She was left with only tears. Once again, silent tears rolled down her cheeks. She sat back on her legs and finally looked at the inscription again. “Friend,” she said quietly. No one but Peggy would have thought to put that, because she couldn’t put “Lover,” even though she knew the truth about Steph and Bucky.

“You’re my best friend, Buck…” she whispered to the marble. And then she did something that the scrawny 40s girl in her would have balked at back in the day. She leaned forward and gently placed her lips against the name, before standing up. She had nothing else to leave, so that would have to be enough. She hadn’t thought to bring anything, because she hadn’t thought this would be here.

“You did good, Commandos…” she said to the rest. “I miss you guys…”

She used the cuff of her jacket to wipe the tears off her cheeks, even though she was sure her face still looked like a mess. She would have to find a washroom and properly clean her face so people wouldn’t think she was a miserable wreck. She was once again glad she had never taken to wearing makeup because then she would have to deal with that as well.

Steph looked down at the inscription one last time, and her eyes lingered on the last name. “Bucky… Goodbye…”

When she walked away, she didn’t look back.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this image of Steph crying at Bucky's grave and then just had to write it down immediately. I would even be willing to make this proper male Steve/Bucky as its own stand-alone fic. But I love this relationship and universe I've created so much that I wanted to try it first with Steph. 
> 
> It's things like this that makes this pairing worth it to me. Because they are so tragic.


	8. Be My Mirror, My Sword and Shield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since Bucky only visits Steph at night, what does he do with his days?

It wasn’t hard for him to find a sniper rifle. With all the chaos of the crashing helicarriers, and his training that made him into an assassin, confiscating one from the wreckage of SHIELD/Hydra after he dragged his target (Stephany Rogers, he reminded himself) onto the beach was easy enough. Along with the cache of knives hidden strategically on his body, and the handgun he had, he went into hiding. But never as far as she thought.

He hid the rifle on the rooftop of the building opposite Steph’s, where he had a clear view down into her new apartment. The other weapons he kept with him, even though he had to discard the combat suit he had always worn. It didn’t help much with his new goal to blend in. The first few weeks, when he wasn’t stalking through every part of the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian, he would lie, partially concealed, on that roof and watch her through the scope of his sniper rifle.

He watched her spread out papers on the floor of her bedroom, and he watched her pace circles around her living room. There were long periods of time where she would disappear, only to return for a few days. He had known she had been looking for him, and he had made a point to disappear. She probably didn’t think he would stay so close.

When the onslaught of memories trickling back into his brain became too much for him, when he needed proof they actually happened, that was when he gave in and snuck into her apartment that one night.

He hadn’t meant to let himself get attached. And he stayed close because he knew now what his mission was, and what it had been all along, even though Hydra had tried to cloud it over with their programming. He had to protect Steph, because he had always protected Steph. Which was hard when she didn’t seem to shy away from any kind of threat. She refused to see him as a threat even when he had almost killed her. Multiple times, by this point. Though the most recent was the night before.

Bucky gazed through the sniper rifle scope and watched Steph. He wanted to see what she would do during the light, when she thought he wasn’t watching. Would she call her Avenger friends? The one named Falcon? Or Natalia?

She called no one. Every now and then her hand would go to her neck to touch the bruise there, but even from this distance, he could tell it had healed quite a bit during the night. Ever since the serum, she healed fast. He healed fast too, though it was never a thought that occurred to him before

It seemed she didn’t have to call anyone, however. In the late morning, a shiny red car pulled up in front of the apartment building. Bucky narrowed his eyes down at it. Anthony Stark, AKA Ironman, climbed out. He glanced around, and Bucky was sure he was looking for him, though he didn’t put very much effort into it. From the back seat of the car, he grabbed an unmarked metal case. Bucky’s first instinct was that it held some kind of weapon. And it really could have been anything. The case was at least two feet square and eight inches deep. The intel he had on Anthony Stark had listed that one of the Ironman suits could fit into a case like that. But it could just as easily be some other kind of weapon.

Bucky tightened his grip on the rifle when Stark walked into the building. A moment later, he watched Steph get up and walk over to the front door of the apartment.

 

 

She hadn’t expected to see Tony in DC like this. The last she had heard, he was still in New York, in Stark Tower. Not that he ever would have told her if he was planning to stop by, anyway.

“Tony. What are you doing here?” she said, perhaps a bit too roughly.

“Wow, Cap. Aren’t you supposed to be the polite one?” He didn’t wait for her permission before stepping inside and closing the door behind himself. He set a curious-looking metal case on the floor in the entrance way and then looked at her again. His eyes drifted to her neck briefly.

She realized she hadn’t worn anything to cover her throat, and the bruise from last night was still visible, even though it looked a week or more old due to her enhanced healing. But Tony knew about that, so he would know it was a fresher bruise than it looked. She barely resisted the urge to cover it with her hand. She hadn’t planned to go out at all today, which was why she hadn’t bothered to cover it, like the silly girls had always done with hickeys back in the 40s. Steph vaguely wondered if they still did that.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “I built a pretty impressive security system into this place. Even though you haven’t been using it.”

Steph scowled and crossed her arms. “Have you been monitoring me?”

Tony wandered around the apartment and looked at her bookshelves, and her record player, and the few sketches she had taped up because she had thought they were better than the rest. “Not really. Not actively,” he admitted. “If you actually used it, I would have a better sense of what’s been going on. But as it stands, I only get emergency alerts.” He stopped wandering and turned to face her again, though she hadn’t moved from her spot by the door. “I got one that said your vitals spiked in the middle of the night last night.”

It was a good thing Steph’s arms were already crossed, because otherwise she would have tensed up completely. As it was, she just gripped her arms a little tighter.

“Before I could do anything, though, they leveled out again. And the sensors indicated you had no life-threatening injuries. So I decided not to bust in with my Ironman armor.”

“Appreciated,” Steph said dryly. Without moving her head, her eye drifted to the metal case Tony had left by the door, but he didn’t say anything else about it.

“Thought I would come by to make sure my system wasn’t going on the blitz.”

“You could have called.”

“Then you would have tried to hide the fact that last night someone tried to strangle you to death.”

Steph did tense up at that, and this time she couldn’t stop herself before her hand went to her throat. “That’s not…” she started.

“Uh huh. If Captain America still has a bruise like that, then it means the guy who did it was strong as hell and probably came close to killing you. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who it was. Though, since I am a genius, I figured it out before seeing that.” He pointed at her neck. “And I assume that’s why you’ve been keeping my security system off.”

“He’s not dangerous,” Steph said.

Tony laughed out right at her. “No, he’s a cuddly mentally unstable assassin.”

“Tony,” she said warningly, taking a step forward.

“Cap, you seem set on trying to find ways to let this guy kill you.”

“He wasn’t. It was an accident. He had a… a nightmare, or a flashback, or something. But he came to _on his own_. He stopped on his own. And if it hadn’t happened when it did, when I was off guard, it wouldn’t have been a problem.”

She only realized what she had said, what she had indicated when Tony quirked an eyebrow and gave her half a smirk. “Off guard?”

“I mean…” At least it seemed like Sam hadn’t actually told anyone else. Though that apparently didn’t matter, because every time she talked to someone, she gave it away.

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” He grinned widely at her, clearly amused despite her discomfort.

She ran a hand over her face, partially trying to cover the redness creeping up. “Just shut up, Stark.”

“Hey, I’m not going to try to stop you from sleeping with your homicidal boyfriend. Getting laid is probably good for both of you. Just make sure you know what you’re doing.”

Steph sighed and slid her hand up to run her fingers through her hair. “Easier said than done. The only thing that seems to really work is to trust him.”

“Trust the man who has tried to kill you three times?”

Steph looked across at him. “The Winter Soldier tried to kill me three times. I trust Bucky. He’s been remembering on his own, and he’s come to me of his own free will. That means he trusts me. So I have to trust him. For everything else, I’m a super soldier. I’ll make it work.”

Tony looked at her and then broke out into a smile. “You are such a sap, Cap.Well, if you ever get him to the point where he’s not trying to strangle people, bring him to Stark Tower. I’ve seen the video footage from your fights, and I think I can make a better metal arm than the Nazis. It looks like the one they outfitted him with is heavy.”

“As if I would ever put Bucky through letting you poke and prod at him.” But Steph did log the offer away, just in case they ever needed it.

Tony shrugged and walked back over to her. “Just a suggestion.” He picked up the metal case. “By the way, I have something for you.”

“For me?” Steph asked in surprise. She had assumed the case contained one of Tony’s suits.

“Yup. A gift, of sorts.” He set it on the dining room table and turned it so the latches faced her.

Steph glanced at him quickly, but for once, his face didn’t give anything away. She walked over to the table and flipped the latches on the case before opening the lid.

 

 

Bucky kept his rifle pointed at Stark, even as he stalked around the living room. Everything he had gathered about the man said that he probably would never try to attack Steph, but that didn’t mean Bucky didn’t think he was capable of it. Though without his suit of armor, Steph would be able to take him down easily, even when taken by surprise.

The strange case stayed by the door as the two talked, seemingly forgotten. It wasn’t hard for him to figure out what the two were talking about, based on the way Steph’s hand went to her throat and how Stark actually pointed at it. He could just imagine the kind of defense, the argument she was giving in his favor. Things she had tried to tell him the previous night.

When Stark finally did pick up the metal case again, Bucky tensed and barely applied pressure to the trigger, ready to shoot if the contents proved to be a weapon of some kind, something to harm Steph. He did not expect Stark to set the case on the table and let Steph open it. He was able to see her face in profile, and she seemed to be just as confused as he was. But she opened the case anyway, and then her eyes went wide.

Bucky couldn’t see what was inside the case yet, but he stayed tense, and waited. Steph flipped back the lid completely and pulled out--

_Target goes by codename “Captain America.” Threat level: lethal. Item of choice is a vibranium shield. Caution: target uses shield as a weapon as well as a shield. Disarm target of shield before engaging. Target is extremely dangerous with shield._

Bucky jerked the rifle away from Steph’s apart and barely managed to keep from squeezing the trigger. He carefully unclenched his fingers from around the gun and rolled onto his back on the rooftop, breathing hard.

He scrubbed both hands over his face, feeling warm flesh and cool metal, and he tried to erase the mission parameters that had popped into his brain, unwanted. He hadn’t realized how easy it was to distance Steph from Captain America while he watched her, while they were together. She didn’t wear the uniform. She appeared normal. But that shield…

The last time he had seen it, he still thought the screaming in his head would go away if he could finish his mission and kill his target. But when she fell, it only got worse. So he dove in after her and dragged her to shore.

“I’m James Buchanan Barnes,” he muttered to himself. “I’m in Washington, DC. The year is 2014. I am not under Hydra control.”

He sighed and lowered his hands from his face. The sun was bright in the sky. A few clouds drifted by lazily, almost mocking in how peaceful they seemed. He rolled back over so he could look back at Steph’s apartment. However, the rifle was pointed a completely different direction now, and without the scope, he could barely make out the two figures through the living room window. Rather than risk losing control again, he jerked the scope off the top of the gun and held it up to his eye.

 

 

A flash of light caught the corner of Steph’s eye. It came from the direction of the roof of the building across the way. It was taller than her building and had a parking lot in front, so it stood a good two or three hundred yards away. The flash of light seemed like something that would come from sunlight catching a piece of glass. She had a pretty good idea what it was, though.

She didn’t turn her head to look fully. Even before Hydra had captured Bucky and turned him into the Winter Soldier, he had been a damn good sniper during the war. Perhaps he wasn’t at Barton’s level, but he had rarely missed, or been found. So if she could tell he was up there, it had to mean something was wrong. But she wasn’t going to do anything with Tony hovering.

Instead, she turned her attention back to the shield in her hands. It was her shield, cleaned and polished, but still her shield. The weight was familiar in her hands, as were the few dings and scrapes from its many years of service. When it had fallen off the helicarrier, she thought she would never see it again. Actually, she thought she was about to die and it didn’t matter. But later, she thought the shield would be one more thing she would never get back.

“How did you find it?” she asked quietly.

“It’s made of vibrarium. Nothing else on those helicarriers was. All I had to do was program my sensors to look for vibrarnium, and presto bingo.”

Steph ghosted her fingers along the bands of color that surrounded the giant white star. “But it must have been under tons of wreckage. Even if you could tell it was down there, how did you get to it?”

“They’ve been cleaning that shit up anyway. You left quite a mess behind, Steph. So all I had to do was wait until enough of it was removed.”

Steph looked over at him and smiled. “Thanks, Tony. This… this means a lot to me. I thought it was gone forever. That I’d never see it again.”

Tony looked at her and perhaps he could tell she wasn’t exactly only talking about the shield. He shrugged. “Figured the shield is part of the Captain America getup. Thought you’d need it to keep fighting.”

Steph nodded slowly and looked back down at the shield. What would Bucky do if he saw it? Had he seen it? Was he up on that rooftop watching them right now? That would certainly explain a lot.

“Now don’t lose it again.”

Steph smiled wide at his tone of voice. “I won’t.”

 

 

Bucky watched them talk. He watched the way Steph handled the shield, how she looked at it. A little while later, Stark left. Bucky watched him get into his car and drive away without a glance around. He turned his attention back to Steph and found her still admiring the shield. She gripped the edges of it and spun with it once or twice, probably getting used to the feel of it again. She was acting like she hadn’t held it in years, even though it had only been months.

Eventually, she did put the shield down. And then she did something unexpected. She grabbed a coat and headed out. He would have thought she would not be so willing to leave the shield behind so soon after getting it back. He watched her leave her apartment building and walk down the street until she turned a corner and disappeared from his view. He could drop down to street level and follow her, but he didn’t feel up to it today.

He sighed and sat back from the rifle. He watched the empty apartment for a moment before he began to take apart and pack up the gun. Who knew when she would return. Perhaps he should do something else, see if he could find something else that would help awaken old memories. He still hadn’t fully decided if he would visit her that night, especially after what had happened. He had a feeling she expected him to return. He almost wanted to, just for that.

The door to the roof creaked open and Bucky crouched down behind the vent that blocked the view from the door to his perch. He slipped his handgun out of the back of his jeans and took the safety off. If someone was coming up to this particular roof, the chances that they were looking for him were pretty high. But he also couldn’t just go and kill a maintenance worker if the guy was only doing his job. It would probably get back to Steph somehow.

Light footsteps took two steps onto the gravel, but stopped. Not a maintenance worker, then, otherwise he would have gone straight to whatever needed to be fixed, not stop two steps onto the roof. Was the person looking for something? For him? Whoever it was, he didn’t shift or shuffle, or make any other kind of nervous movement people tended to do while they stood still. Definitely not a normal civilian, then. Still unable to determine whether it was a threat or not.

He decided to take the chance of potentially revealing his position by glancing around the edge of the ventilation shaft, gun raised. It wasn’t a Hydra agent standing at the entrance to the roof. It was Steph. She saw him and then held up her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. I just thought you would bolt if you saw me coming.”

She was right. He probably would have. That was why she walked the opposite direction. She must have doubled back and come around the other side of the building. He stood up, still with the gun held loosely in his hand, pointed in the vicinity of her legs.

“Well?” she said after a moment. “I’m pretty sure you’re not going to shoot me, otherwise you would have.”

Bucky clicked the safety back on and stowed the gun before straightening up completely. He wasn’t sure a machine could have a nervous twitch, but he could feel the fingers of his metal hand clench and unclench, which seemed to happen whenever he was trying to ground himself.

Steph didn’t move from her spot near the door. She watched him not with caution, but curiosity, waiting to see what he decided to do before making any move of her own.

Bucky crossed his arms to keep his hand from doing that thing it was doing. He hid it in the crook of his arm, and it quieted down. It could also be some kind of malfunction. They had always checked the arm after every mission to make sure it hadn’t been damaged. There was no one to check the arm now.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked.

“Saw you,” she said simply. “Or, I saw light shift and I figured it was you.” She took one step forward, and then a couple more until she was standing in front of him. It was a familiar position, but odd to see with the sun shining brightly overhead. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

She wasn’t even mad that he had been watching her. It was so typical that he almost laughed. “Okay,” he repeated.

“Not injured or…”

“Having a flashback.”

“Yeah…”

“Then I’m okay.”

“Good.” She smiled softly. She glanced around him and didn’t seem surprised to see the half disassembled sniper rifle. “You don’t have to just watch, you know.” She looked back at his face. “You can come in during the day too.”

“I see better from up here.”

Steph looked around at the surrounding buildings, including her apartment building. “Yes, I can tell.”

 

 

Steph sat down cross-legged on the rooftop beside the rifle and looked across to her apartment. From here, Bucky would have a pretty clear view of her living room and bedroom. It was a bit too far to make out details with the naked eye, but she imagined that was why he used the sniper rifle.

“So what do you see?”

Bucky hovered, as if he was unsure what to do. Finally, he crouched down beside Steph, kneeling on one knee. It was a position he could easily stand up from, if he needed to move in a hurry. “Stark found the Captain America shield.”

Steph sighed. He didn’t call it her shield. It was Captain America’s shield. “Yes. Every now and then he does something nice like that.”

“The last time you had it was…”

“Yeah. When we were on the Helicarrier.” She glanced sideways at him, to see how he would react to that.

He only snorted. “Of all these things to survive with you to the 21st century, of course that shield was one.”

Steph blinked in surprise. “Well I had it with me when I f--when I crashed the plane.” If Bucky noticed how she changed words, he didn’t show it. “The same with my uniform. That’s how the Smithsonian got their hands on my authentic World War II uniform. And how I got it back when we…”

“When we fought,” he finished for her.

“Yeah…” she said slowly. “They had your uniform too. Though it wasn’t your real one. It was a pretty good replica, though. They couldn’t get your real one because, well…”

“Because I was wearing it when I fell.”

“It wasn’t exactly the same, but I thought they did a good job with it. It looked pretty close to the original.”

“I saw.”

She glanced at him again, but he wasn’t looking at her. She had forgotten he told her how he had spent a lot of time in the Smithsonian exhibit trying to find details of his past, before the memories really started coming back en masse.

“Stark doesn’t trust me,” he said, which took her by surprise again.

“He’s never met you,” Steph countered.

“He thinks I will try to kill you again.”

She spun around and started to say, “How do you--” but then cut herself off. She just sighed instead. “Yes. Him and a few others.” She leaned back on her hands and felt the gravel that covered the roof cut into her palms, and she looked up at the sky. “But like I told him, and I told them, I trust you. You’re my best friend, Buck.”

“But I could kill you. I’m not always…” She watched him shift out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not always in control.”

Steph pushed herself to sit up fully and turned so she was facing him. “But most of the time you are. And that’s good enough for me.” She sat up on her knees and gently placed her hands on his shoulders. She could feel hard muscle under one hand, and hard metal under the other. “You may not trust yourself, but I trust you.” When he looked like he wanted to protest again, she said, “Don’t worry. I won’t let my guard down again. Next time, I’ll help you snap out of it before you almost kill me.” She smiled softly. “Remember? We’re in this together.”

He looked at her for a moment and then said, “I think we reached the end of the line a long time ago.”

“Then I guess we'll just have to get off and walk the rest of the way. Cause I’m with you, always.”

“Always…” he said. For the first time, he was the one who leaned forward and kissed her softly.


	9. Til the Love Runs Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life is made of missed chances.
> 
> Or, Steph and Bucky tiptoe around what they actually want.

It wasn’t exactly the first time Steph had stumbled upon Bucky kissing someone. She had a feeling he didn’t try to do it around her, but he certainly didn’t make a secret of it. Everyone in the neighborhood knew how he was. And even though most girls’ parents warned them about guys like him, they were still tripping over themselves to be Bucky’s next girl. Steph thought it was pathetic.

Which didn’t exactly stop her from wanting the same thing. Sort of. She didn’t want to be one of those bubbly girls hanging onto his arm and giggling endlessly. But she wanted to kiss him, among other things. Though the chances of that ever happening were pretty much zero. He was her best friend, and she his. They were closer than blood, and closer than any of his little girlfriends would ever get to him. And it wasn’t enough.

Steph sighed as she unlocked the door to her apartment. Coming back from searching for yet another job, she had turned a corner only to see some girl with her hands all over Bucky, and him with his tongue down her throat. So of course she turned the other way and found a different route home, maybe walking faster than she should have in the cold. It was exactly the last thing she wanted to see after a bad day, and by the time she reached her apartment she was a bit out of breath. She couldn’t even console herself with the idea that if money got tight enough, she could enlist for standard pay and three square meals a day. Not that she hadn’t tried yet. But, as someone had yelled at her, they weren’t accepting girls.

Everything made her feel bone-weary and sick. She dropped her key on the rickety side table by the door and leaned against the wall, letting the back of her head thunk softly against the dirty wallpaper, still breathing a little heavily. Some days were harder than others to stay optimistic. If she couldn’t find a job soon, then she wouldn’t have enough for basic things like food. Not that skipping meals was something she was unused to, because they had both had to deal with periods of no money.

Not to mention it hurt, seeing Bucky like that. She hated admitting it to herself, even when she wouldn’t admit it to anyone else. But every time she saw some other girl getting to touch him in a way Steph couldn’t, could never allow herself to, it was like a icy knife had stabbed her in the chest, and then twisted around.  

Steph huffed out a breath to try to clear the pain in her heart, and to try to finally catch her breath, but it got caught on the way out and she coughed. But then the coughing turned into a wheeze and then she felt the familiar tightness in her chest. No, no, not now… Not while she was alone… This was the worst time for an attack. If she was lucky, it would pass in a few minutes. She tried to breathe through the little space still open in her throat. But the tightness in her chest got worse, and she felt like she was drowning.

She tried once more to push herself away from the wall with her hands. But her arm had no strength, and instead went to her chest. She clutched at her shirt, and leaned her head back against the wall again, trying to open her lungs. But it was no use. The air just wasn’t coming in.

“Bucky…” she wheezed out.

 

Bucky had been heading to Steph’s apartment, which was practically their apartment, even though he didn’t officially live there, when he got… distracted. It wasn’t at all an unpleasant distraction, though he had been with dames who could kiss better than this one. At least she was enthusiastic. Part of him felt bad cause he was sure Steph was waiting for him. Not to mention, she would not be happy when she found out what he was doing. Knowing her, she’d be mad the rest of the night, though in that underhand way where she decided to sit on the couch with her sketchpad and graphite and not say a word to him.

Steph was confusing. Sometimes he thought he knew her better than he knew himself. And then other times he had no idea what was going through her head. Some people liked to say you couldn’t figure out what a girl was thinking, but he actually found girl’s thoughts pretty easy, at least all the girls he knew. But Steph was an anomaly. She tried her hardest to act like a guy, but she didn’t think like one. And she definitely didn’t think like a girl either. She talked with him about a lot, but sometimes she just refused to share her thoughts.

Bucky pulled back, the guilt winning out. He tried to pull Lorraine’s (Lorelei? Lauren? Ah, whatever…) hands off, but she hung tight.

“What’s wrong? Got somewhere to be?” she asked, trying her best for a teasing, seductive voice.

“Yup, I do.” He yanked her hands off and set them at her sides. He smirked light-heartedly. “Sorry, Doll.”

She pouted. “You can’t possibly want to spend time with that tomboy friend of yours more than with me.”

Bucky frowned. “Yeah, actually, I do. And she’s got a name.”

Laura, or whatever, rolled her eyes. “Oh please. No one knows why you bother with someone as pathetic as her.” She tried to move closer and trail a finger down the front of his chest. “Wouldn’t you much rather be with a girl who actually knows what she wants?”

Bucky grabbed her finger and shoved her away. “You’re the pathetic one. Now get out of here. Cause the next time I hear you talking like that about Steph, you’ll be sorry.”

She hmphed loudly. “You really are wasting your time.”

“Don’t I know it.” He turned and continued his path to his original destination.

“Let me know when you get bored with your _friend_!” Laverne called after him. “I’ll show you what a real woman is like!”

Bucky shook his head and made a mental note to keep away from that one. If he told Steph about that little episode, she would laugh and laugh at him for choosing a crazy girl.

He kicked the rock by the door to the apartment aside and leaned down to fetch the spare key. Steph always made sure it was there so he could come by whenever he wanted. As he unlocked the door, he thought about what that girl had said (he had given up on trying to remember her name). Was he really that obvious? He knew he wanted something more with Steph, but sometimes it was so hard to tell what _she_ wanted. She was all fight, fight, fight, and she spoke her mind openly. But she had never shown any kind of romantic interest in _anyone_. So he had no idea if she would appreciate any kind of move on his part, or if she would punch him and put him down as just one more guy who was trying to tell her what to do. Having feelings for your best friend was hard.

When he opened the door, all those thoughts immediately left his head, because Steph was gasping and wheezing not more than two feet away from him, going through what was surely one of her worst asthma attacks of the year.

“Steph!” He grabbed her arms and helped her stand upright from where she had just barely managed to lean against the wall and placed one palm against her back, trying to give her space to breathe. She instantly grabbed his shirt sleeve and hung onto it for dear life. Her eyes found his and he was surprised to see she looked relieved, even though she could barely breathe. It almost hurt how much she believed in him.

“Come on, Steph! Just breathe for me! I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay.” He held onto her upper arms to keep her standing, because her knees gave out beneath her just as she clutched onto him. But the last thing he wanted was to bruise her arms with the way he was holding her too tightly. So he maneuvered her to sit on the couch and tried to pry her fingers from his sleeve, but she wouldn’t let him. Even though she was so weak, her fingers were strong.

He let her keep clinging onto him. “I’m here. I’m not leaving.” He placed his hand between her shoulder blades and pressed her against his chest. “Breathe with me. You can do it.” He took a few exaggerated breaths for her to mimic and imagined forcing that air into her lungs. It wasn’t fair it was so easy for him to breathe when she couldn’t.

She kept wheezing, but it didn’t sound so life-threatening. He kept holding her and tucked her head under his chin, making sure to keep her head tilted back enough  to keep her throat open.

Eventually, after an agonizing amount of time, her breathing evened out, and she relaxed against him. She was too tired to push away, so he relished the few moments he would be able to hold her like this before she got sick of it. She hated being coddled, but would put up with it from him to an extent.

“There you go…”

“Bucky…” she said weakly and pushed back slightly so she could smile up at him, blue eyes bright. She didn’t pull completely out of his arms either.

“Don’t scare me like that, you stupid girl,” he said affectionately and rubbed her back gently, easing out the last bits of the attack. He wanted to kiss her. This close, it would have been easy. He would only have to lean forward an inch or two. But he didn’t. He restrained himself.

“Thanks…” she said. She put her hands on his chest to push herself out of his arms completely. “For looking out for me…”

“Always,” he replied quickly. “I will always be here for you. I promise. Me and you, we’re together til the end of the line.”

She smiled and dropped her hands. “I know.” She tried to stand, but immediately collapsed back.

“Steph.” He half rose to catch her and settled her back against the couch.

“Too fast, but I’ll be good in a minute. You don’t have to keep worrying about me.” She pulled back from him and leaned back against the couch, resting her head back with her eyes closed.

“Don’t be stupid. I will always worry about you.” His eyes roamed her face, just making sure she was really okay.

“You’re always saving me…” she said after a moment, and opened her eyes so she could look at him.

He looked down at her, sitting sideways while she sat with her back and head completely flush with the couch. “Of course. You’re my best friend. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, punk. I promised.”

“Why…?” she said quietly. “Don’t I just… hold you back?”

“Of course not. You could never do that. You’re…” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Didn’t you hear anything I just said? You’re important to me, stupid girl.”

She rolled her head sideways on the back of the couch and then she smiled at him lightly. “Okay. Some day, Buck, I’ll be able to repay you.”

“You don’t have to repay me.”

“Still.” She pushed herself up to sit up straight so she was more on his level. “I want to be able to help you too and not just rely on you.”

He looked at her and she looked at him and then for quiet for a moment. Maybe he was imagining it, but it seemed like they were both holding their breath. Just when Bucky made up his mind to close the couple inches between them, Steph stood up.

“Thanks for being here for me, Bucky,” she said as she stretched her arms above her head. “I’m good now.”

“Yeah…” he said. He had missed his opportunity. But he made a resolve that if he ever got a chance, he really would just kiss Steph. He just needed a sign.

But his draft letter came a week later. He told Steph he had enlisted so she wouldn’t think he was scared or unpatriotic since she had been trying to get in despite being a girl. Just as quickly, he had to report for basic training and leave Steph behind. So he never did get his chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a long time to get happy with this chapter. I really wanted to do an asthma attack scene, but I couldn't decide how to do it. I actually did my research and inhalers weren't invented until the 60s. Shots of epinephrine were used in serious attacks, but it was also considered psychosomatic, and not a real ailment. So I decided less is more. 
> 
> This was the last idea I had for a chapter, hence the now complete status. If I come up with more, I will certainly add them. But that might not be for a while.


	10. I Was There for You in Your Darkest Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's not the only one who has nightmares.

Steph didn’t know what to make of what she had just seen. It almost looked like the distant starry sky had opened up in the middle of the Valkyrie and torn Schmidt apart, before sucking him through, piece by piece. Whatever had just happened, it made the Tesseract hot enough that it melted straight through the hull of the plane. Good riddance, was all Steph thought about that.

But then she had to take control of the plane, which was still on its course for New York, as she discovered when she checked the panels. The landing gear was busted and there were still enough armed bombs to wipe out the entire Eastern seaboard. So Steph got on the radio. She knew what she had to do.

It crackled to life, and she hoped the rest of the unit had captured the Hydra base by now. “Come in. This is Captain Rogers. Do you read me?”

“ _Captain Rogers._ ” Steph was so relieved to hear Morita’s voice on the other end. If they had control of the communications, it meant they were successful in taking the base. “ _What is your loca—_ ” he started to say, but was cut off by another voice.

“ _Steph, is that you?_ ” Peggy asked. “ _Are you alright?_ ”

“Peggy!” Steph said in surprise, though she really shouldn’t be surprised anymore at Peggy’s ability to exert her authority. But then she remembered she didn’t have a lot of time. “Schmidt’s dead.”

“ _What about the plane?_ ” Peggy asked calmly, but there was an edge to her voice.

Steph had been flipping switches and twisting dials, but had so far been unsuccessful in taking the plane out of autopilot. “Not good.”

“ _Give me your coordinates. I’ll find you a safe landing site._ ” Peggy’s voice was strained, and Steph was willing to bet she didn’t believe her own words.

“There’s not going to be a safe landing,” Steph said. She couldn’t take it off autopilot, but she had discovered she could control whether the plane went up or down. “I’m going to try to force it down.”

“ _I’ll get Howard on the line. He’ll know what to do._ ” Now Peggy’s voice really sounded strained. But she kept her composure, maybe for Steph’s sake.

Steph glanced at one of the screens. The plane wasn’t far from the US. “There’s not enough time,” she thought and said at the same time. It was true. There was only one thing to do. “This thing’s moving too fast and it’s heading for New York. I have to put it in the water.”

“ _We have time. We can work it out._ ”

Why did it seem like Steph always ran out of time? Just a few more minutes to land the plane. Just another second to grab his hand. “Right now I’m in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are gonna die.” Steph paused and looked out the broken front windows. Rosy dawn was just creeping around from behind the plane. Honestly, it was breathtaking. If this was going to be the last thing she saw, it wasn’t that bad. “Do you remember what you said in the bar? Giving Bucky the dignity of his choice to follow me? Well, this is my choice.”

Peggy didn’t try to convince her to try something else. She must have accepted there was no alternative. So Steph grabbed the controls and pushed them down as hard as she could. The massive plane immediately starting to descend into a nose dive. Tears collected at the corners of Steph’s eyes from the wind blowing in her face through the broken window. At least, she told herself it was only from the wind.

“I wish he was here,” she said, without thinking about it beforehand. Who knew who else was listening on the other end? But then, in a few moments it wouldn’t matter anymore.

“ _Steph…_ ” Peggy said quietly.

Real tears came to Steph’s eyes this time. They ran across the sides of her head and into her hair from the sheer force of the wind. “I never told him.” And the guilt of that consumed her every day since Bucky had fallen off that train.

“ _He knew,_ ” was Peggy’s response. She sounded so sure, even though her voice was thick.

“Looks like I’m leaving a mess for you guys. You’ll have to finish up the rest on your own.” Steph tried to sound light-hearted, but it came out all wrong. She really had to yell over the wind. “Take care of my Commandos. If anyone can keep them in line, it’s you.”

“ _I will._ ” Steph thought she heard a sob escape from Peggy, but it was lost over the roaring in the cockpit.

The plane had come across a field of ice, so as far as the eye could see was only white. Either way, it would be a hard landing. This was it. If there was anything else, she had to get it out now. “Thanks, Peggy. I always knew I could trust—”

Silence was supposed to follow. Steph was supposed to be dead. She shouldn’t be able to hear anything. It was supposed to just be over. She had nothing to live for anymore. She’d lost everything and sacrificed everything to the fight. But still, she could hear it.

_Steph?_

No, she didn’t want to hear this. She couldn’t hear what came after the crash. It was too painful.

_Steph?_

Please, let her rest in peace. She’d given up. No, she had fought her hardest until the very end. Captain America never gave up. But she couldn’t keep going anymore. Just let her die.

_Steph?_

Steph blinked her eyes open to see Bucky’s face leaning over her. “Bucky…?” she asked slowly. “What…?” How could he be here? Wasn’t he dead? Did that mean she really was dead too? Was there really such thing as an after life?

And then reality caught up and she remembered where she was. She wasn’t flying a plane into a frozen wasteland in 1944. She was in her apartment in Washington, DC in 2014. Steph scrubbed her hands across her face and slid her fingers up into her hair before dropping her arms above her head on the bed. She looked up at Bucky, who was on his side, leaning on his elbow so he could hover his face over hers. She met his eyes. He looked concerned.

“I’m okay,” she said. She reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. Sometimes it amused her that Bucky actually had longer hair than her now. But she had to admit, she did like running her fingers through it.

“You were having a nightmare,” he said, matter-of-fact.

“I…” She started to come up with some excuse, some denial, but she closed her mouth. “Weird to be on this end of it…” She smiled lightly, trying to pass it off as nothing, but he didn’t smile back.

“Steph.”

“I’m okay, really. I’m not gonna…” She sighed and dropped her arms again. It had been a long time since she’s dreamt of the plane crash. She used to dream of it a lot when she first woke up from the ice, but ever since all the events of earlier this year, she usually had nightmares of Bucky falling off the train, of all the horrible things they did to him because she hadn’t saved him. “It was just a dream.”

“Bad?”

“It’s one I’ve had before…”

“Tell me about it.”

“Bucky…” She looked up and met his eyes again.

“I know what works. This wasn’t just a nightmare, it was memory. So tell me.”

Steph sighed. The truth was she did want to talk about it, but she felt guilty for wanting to die at the end there. “It was… I dreamed about the plane, and the crash…”

He had a knowing look on his face. He had admitted before to dreaming about falling off the train, but usually his memory/dreams were much more confusing. Hers was so crisp, it could have been happening moments before she woke up.

“You know all about that, right?”

“I know you crashed the Valkyrie after Schmidt disappeared because you didn’t want it to reach the United States.”

“I talked to Peggy at the very end. She was on the other end of the radio.” She looked at a point on the ceiling beyond his head, because meeting his eyes suddenly felt too hard. “They recorded it, you know. You can listen to it, if you want, or you could when SHIELD’s records were organized. It must be floating around on the internet somewhere now.” She paused and took the time to swallow down a lump in her throat, still unable to meet his eyes. “I listened to it, a few weeks after they woke me up. I… I guess I wanted to see if my memory matched up to the recording. It did, but… Well, the plane crashed, and I thought that would be the end of it. But then you can hear… Peggy just said _Steph_ over and over again, as if I could still hear. And she sounded so…”

“Steph,” he said calmly, so she looked back at his face again. “Do you regret your choice?”

“I did… for a while…” She reached up again to stroke her fingers through his hair, watching his face, using that to ground herself. “I had a hard time finding my purpose. I mean, there was the battle of New York, but… I couldn’t help think there was more I could have done in the War. And I…” She paused and bit her lip. “I could have found you. I could have saved you from Hydra before they did all that awful stuff to you.”

“That’s what’s bothering you? That you didn’t find me?” He leaned in closer over her. “For all you knew, I was dead. I fell behind enemy lines, off a fast-moving train. You couldn’t go back just to get my body.”

“I should have. How can you not be angry at me at all? Because I would rather sacrifice myself than keep living without you, I wasn’t there to help you.”

“It’s not your fault what happened to me. And if all that crap hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be here now. It was a long time in coming, but we did find each other again.”

“Are you trying to say everything happens for a reason?” She felt the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile. “That doesn’t sound like you at all.”

He scowled down at her, and it was such an expression the old Bucky would have given her, that it almost made her forget he wasn’t completely back to his old self, not all the time. “I’m saying things worked out. It’s not perfect, but… you shouldn’t regret a past you can’t change.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it. She brushed his hair back so she could actually see his face, since it kept falling in his eyes with the way he was leaning over her. “You know… maybe you should take your own advice.”

He stared down at her. “That’s not…” He sighed and tried to pull back, but she wouldn’t let him, so he looked at her again. “It’s different.”

“You shouldn’t regret a past you can’t change,” she repeated.

“You at least had control over your decisions. You got to make a choice.” He fully leaned over her, with his elbow braced on the bed beside her head. “I had no control and no choice. But still. I murdered people. I did Hydra’s good work.” The bitterness was back, the self-loathing.

“None of that is your fault,” she said quietly.

“And I still can’t completely remember who I was before.”

“Bucky,” she said, and he met her eyes. Their faces were much closer now with his new position. “It’s okay.” She leaned up and kissed him softly, tangling her fingers in his hair. When she pulled back, she held him close. “You can’t regret a past you had no control over. Because you’re here now. And I’m here now. And we stopped the bad guys. And soon we’ll destroy Hydra for good.”

He smiled wryly down at her. “Now you sound more like Captain America.”

She felt the corner of her lips quirk. “I know how to give people inspiring pep talks. It’s one of my super powers.”

He laughed and kissed her again. She pulled him closer happily. He used to laugh so much before the war, but now he hardly ever did it. So the sound was like a gem. Maybe she wouldn’t ever get her original Bucky back, but she loved this battle-scarred one just as much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you if I ever thought of anything else, I'd add it. Like most of my stuff, the idea for this one came from another fic I've been meandering through. I did a scene where Bucky hears the recording of the radio conversation between Peggy and Steve. So I thought about how it would be different between Peggy and Steph. And this happened.
> 
> (Also, I'm beginning to realize I may have a thing for people running their fingers through their own or someone else's hair.)


	11. Like Thunder, Gonna Shake the Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not everyone cheered for Captain America.

The day after the festivities and celebrations of the one night off, the soldiers went back to work. The medics were making the rounds through the rescued POWs who hadn’t need immediate medical attention, just to make sure they were all cleared to go back into active duty. Even though Bucky had been cleared the night before, they wanted another look at him. Steph had a feeling it had something to do with the fact that Hydra had been experimenting on him. She didn’t know what they were looking for, but she hoped they wouldn’t find anything. Bucky seemed… well, okay, to her. He was obviously not at 100%, having just come from being tortured. But he was still Bucky.

They had barely managed to get away from her tent in the morning when the medics found them. So they nearly gave her a heart attack, cause she thought she and Bucky had been caught. When they said they wanted to examine him again, she was so relieved she didn’t immediately notice the way Bucky tensed up. When he didn’t immediately respond, she knew he was gearing up for a fight, so she said, “Go with them. Remember where you were four days ago? Better safe than sorry…”

He looked at her, none of his usual humor on his face. But then he rolled his eyes. “Fine. But I’m supposed to be cleared.” He glanced back at her as he followed them to the medical tent.

Steph watched them walk away with her hands clasped around her elbows. Honestly, she had mixed feelings about the whole thing. Waking up tangled up in Bucky’s arms, god, that had been the best feeling ever. But then right on the tail of that elation was the sense of worry and dread. Did anyone notice? Could they get in trouble for this? Was that a stupid, unnecessary risk they just took? And then of course, Bucky had just been tortured and held prisoner. She almost shuddered when she thought about how close she had been to losing him. If she had waiting another day… But she had made it in time. He was safe, for now.

Steph sighed and joined the other soldiers in the mess hall. Several called out to her and wanted to hear more about how they’d fought their way out of the Hydra factory. Others joined in to tell their own versions. It was strange to be welcomed into a group. Steph had spent most of her life being an outcast.

Bucky didn’t show up the whole time she was there, so when she was done, she went to find him, but as she rounded a corner, a tall man stepped in front of her path, blocking her way. What she discovered after the procedure was that she was suddenly the same height or taller than most men. However, she had to look up to see this guy’s face. He looked familiar, and she couldn’t really remember why. Whoever he was, he did not seem pleased to see her.

“I remembered where I’d seen you before,” he said with a New York accent so thick that it made her remember why she recognized him. He had been at Camp Lehigh with the SSR unit that eventually came overseas. She thought his name was Hodge, or something.

“Yeah?” she said, unsure what he wanted. Though she had a pretty good idea.

“You were that ugly brat they brought to Lehigh. Said you were chosen for some procedure. So that’s why you look like that.” His eyes did a very obvious once-over of her body that made Steph want to cross her arms across her chest.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to men ogling her since the procedure. But that always had been when she was in costume. Here she was wearing army issue trousers, and the same leather jacket she had taken before breaking into the Hydra factory. She wasn’t dressed like a girl. She was dressed like a soldier.

“Looks like they wasted whatever it was on you.” It sounded like an echo of what Schmidt had told her. “They shoulda picked a real soldier. Everyone knows girls’re only good for one thing.” He smirked. “Bending over and lifting their skirts.”

Steph clenched her fist at her side. She had managed to not cross her arms, because she knew it would make her look defensive. And she knew she could take this guy if she had to. But it was getting really hard not to hit him in the face.

“Didn’t they teach you how to do that when they put you in those USO shows? Look at the other dames. They get it right.”

“I’m not like other women,” Steph said, glaring up at him.

“Yeah. You don’t know how to be a girl. So how’d you trick them into letting you here? How many people did you fuck to get here?”

Steph grit her teeth. “Do you really want to get beaten down by two women in your very short career as a soldier?” she asked because she suddenly remembered the story she had heard. “The way I hear it, Agent Carter punched you in the face and took you down a peg on your first day.”

He sneered at her and grabbed the front of her jacket. “That damn bitch, thinking she’s so high and mighty. You girls don’t belong here.”

Steph looked up at him calmly. “Oh really? Then who was the one who rescued 400 soldiers and took down a Hydra factory? Last time I checked, Hydra is who the SSR is trying to take out, and you’re a member of the unit.”

“You got there at the right time. You’re just taking credit for what real soldiers did. You ain’t a soldier. You’re a god damned girl.”

“Hey!” she heard from behind her. “Get your fucking hands off her!” It was Bucky’s voice. While a part of her appreciated that he wanted to come to her aid, she didn’t want this to start a real fight, because then he would get in trouble.

“Bucky, I’ve got this,” she said as she heard him run up to her side. She saw out of the corner of her eye that he reached out to grab Hodge, but stopped when two other people appeared at her side.

“What do we have here?” a man asked. When he stepped into her line of vision, Steph could see it was the man with the bowler had, Drugan.

“Here to save the damsel in distress?” Hodge asked, still holding tightly to the front of her jacket.

“I’m no damsel,” Steph growled.

“True,” Falsworth said from beside Drugan. “We saw her in action. Also, I thought I should point out that you are harassing a captain. You wouldn’t want to be punished for assaulting someone of much higher rank than you, now would you?”

Hodge looked at the soldiers around him, and seemed to realize he was outnumbered. So he let go of the front of Steph’s jacket quickly and stepped back. “Fine. Hide behind your protectors.” He turned and walked off quickly.

Steph straightened her jacket and turned to look at the men who had stepped in to what could have been a fight on her behalf. Bucky had a murderous look on his face and was still watching Hodge stalk away. He looked like he had half a mind to chase him down and punch him anyway.

“Bucky,” Steph said so that he would look at her.

“You okay?” he asked, not like he was worried she was actually hurt, but like he wanted to double-check.

Steph rolled her eyes. “If he had tried anything, he would be the one on the ground, not me.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Drugan said.

Steph looked at him. “Why’d you step up to defend me?”

“You’re kidding, right?” He looked at her, and then glanced at Bucky, who had moved to stand close to her. “A lot of soldiers here owe you their lives. You saved us from being worked to death at that factory.” He glanced at Bucky again, but this time it was more pointed. “Or worse.”

“Well… thank you,” she said awkwardly.

“Let us know if anyone else needs to be put in line.” He nodded at Bucky. “See you later, Sarge.” He and Falsworth walked away.

“I leave you alone for an hour,” Bucky started to say as he turned to look at her, “and you’re already getting in a fight with a bully.”

“I didn’t actually get in a fight,” she said as she put her hands on her hips. But she smiled despite herself.

“I guess this just proves you really are the same Steph.”

Steph frowned. “What, you thought I was different?”

“Well…” He held his hand up and waved it vaguely at her new and improved body.

“You know I’m still the same, just… um… stronger.”

Bucky smiled. It was the kind of smile that could light up New York City. “No kidding,” he said in such as way that she can’t help but smile too.

“So what about you? Did they… find anything?”

Bucky shook his head and crosses his arm, an annoyed expressing coming over his face. “No. Just wasted my time.”

She looked at him. “Bucky, when I found you, you could barely walk.”

He looked at her and uncrossed his arms so he could hold them out at his sides. “But I’m fine now, see? No lasting damage.”

“Yeah, thank god… It could have been worse.”

He shrugged. “It could always have been worse. But we’ve survived this far, haven’t we?” He smiled, just a bit.

“Yeah.” She smiled back and moved closer to him. “We have.”

He reached out to touch her face, but then stopped when he realized they were out in the open where anyone could see them. So he tilted his head back towards the mess hall and she followed him around behind the building. Once they were alone, he reached out again and pulled her close, tilting her face up so he could kiss her.

It was still fantastic. She never wanted to get used to this feeling. She always wanted to be surprised by the taste of his lips and the touch of his tongue, and the slight scrape of his teeth. Because if she was still surprised by it, then it could be real. It would remind her every time that this was reality. She finally was with Bucky. It wasn’t how she had always imagined it happening, but she finally had him. She could put up with sexist assholes as long as she could kiss Bucky like this afterwards.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, another one! I'm on a roll. 
> 
> Is Hodge totally OOC? Yes. Did I use that character as an excuse to do this scene? Yes. And oh, look! It ends with Bucky and Steph going at it again. It's possible that I am incapable of ending a scene without them going at it, unless it takes place before they got together. But then again, I am a complete sap tried and true. Also, this whole thing is ultimately about their relationship, so it's always going to come back to them.


	12. Sometimes People Leave You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The train.

Hydra had been waiting for them. Apparently they weren’t the only ones who thought this would be an ideal time for an ambush. Being separated from Bucky, being cornered, and having to fight off Hydra agents with tesseract powered weapons was not how Steph wanted to start this mission. However, they’d taken down enough Hydra agents by this point that these few only presented a bit of a challenge. She knocked out her guy and got back to Bucky just in time to toss him her gun so he could take out the last one who had cornered him.

“I had him,” he said as he slowly lowered the gun, looking past the dead Hydra agents to make sure no more were coming.

“I know you did,” she said as she walked up to him and adjusted her shield on her arm. He only managed to spare her half a smile before she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and yelled, “Get down!” as she dragged him behind her. She just managed to get her shield up in time to deflect a blue blast of energy into the side of the train. Or more, out of the train, as it was so powerful it tore a giant hole in the car. It had also sent her flying back and her shield flew off her arm.

She heard the sound of the weapon powering up again and knew she didn’t have enough time to block it. But Bucky was in better shape. He picked up the shield and shot at the guy with her gun. Which meant he was in the worst position to block the second attack. That blast had knocked Captain America off her feet, so when Bucky held up the shield to block, it sent the shield flying one way, and him flying the other, right out the hole in the side of the train.

“Bucky!!!” Steph screamed. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed the handle of her shield before she had fully regained her balance and threw it as hard as she could at the Hydra agent, sending him flying halfway back into the next car. For once she didn’t even care where her shield landed.

She dragged her helmet off her head so she could see and leaned out the hole in the side of the train. Oh thank god, thank god, Bucky had managed to grab on. She clutched one of the rails and moved out as far as she could.

“Bucky!” she shouted again over the roaring wind whistling past them. She leaned out as far as she could. “Grab my hand!”

He was barely clinging on, and the metal was creaking dangerously. He swung his hand out towards her, and it was only inches away, but he almost lost his grip, so he had to return it to the rail before she could grab it.

“Bucky!!” she yelled as the metal creaked again, audible even over the wind. He reached out again just as the whole thing gave way. “BUCKY!!! No!!!!” she screamed and made a desperate grab for him, but he was too far away. And then he fell. She heard him scream for her, and then he was gone, lost in the snow and the whiteness at the bottom of the ravine.

Steph barely registered the wind anymore, she kept staring at the point where Bucky had disappeared, only dimly aware of the fact that she had to move, she would fall too if she continued to hang onto the torn side of the train car. But she couldn’t move. The whole thing had been maybe a minute. But in one minute her whole life had changed.

Steph finally moved back towards the opening in the train when she realized a tunnel was coming up. She fell inside and dropped face down on the floor, onto her arms, and could feel her shoulders shaking with dry sobs. The wind still roared past the train car and it whipped her short hair around. The air was frigid against her face, but she couldn’t feel it. She was already numb.

No. NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo. He couldn’t be gone. He just couldn’t be. Bucky had always been there for her. Through everything. He had survived being captured and tortured by Hydra. They had managed to come back from so many things together. There were so many close calls, so it was impossible to believe anything could actually happen. He just couldn’t be d--

Steph looked up and saw her helmet. She gritted her teeth and propped herself up on her elbows. In one fluid motion, she rose to her feet, grabbing the helmet as she went and cramming it back on her head. She slowly and carefully made her way towards the front of the train, snatching one of the dead Hydra agents’ gun as she went. She stopped in the next car and stood over the man who carried the tesseract-powered gun. He was still unconscious from where she had knocked him out, and a dent was in his chest plate from her shield, which had landed next to him. 

She bent over to pick up her shield and then adjusted it on her arm as she moved her foot so she stood with her legs on either side of his chest, so she could look down into his masked face.  She kicked him in the side, hard. “Wake up,” she said calmly. The guy shifted and she leaned down so she could yank his mask off. It was a normal guy, underneath. Just a man.

He looked at her and seemed to finally realized what was happening because he made a move to lift the arm with the weapon. She stepped on the arm and pinned it down. Then she raised the gun and pointed it into the guy’s face.

“I’m supposed to capture Hydra agents alive. But I know you won’t cooperate. So I wanted to have the honor of doing this myself.” One bullet. One shot. And it echoed through the metal chamber. At that range, his face was unrecognizable. Good. He looked more like the monster he followed, covered in red.

Steph stepped over him and made her way to the front of the train. When she got there, it was to see Gabe had killed the engineer and had successfully captured Zola. He was bringing the train into a secure place where they could escape with the rest of the Commandos and an SSR unit.

Gabe looked up when he saw her. And then his eyes went past her, and then back to her face, taking in her grim expression. “Bucky?” he asked.

She looked at him and shook her head, not quite trusting her voice to stay steady if she had to say what happened.

“Cap…” he started to say.

But she cut him off. “Later. We have a mission to complete.”

He looked at her and nodded before returning to the task at hand.

When they brought Zola in, the others were just as surprised, but they waited until Steph gave her report. “We were ambushed and separated,” she said calmly, with dry eyes. “And outnumbered. During an exchange of fire, a hole was blasted in the side of the train, and Sergeant Barnes was throw out where he… he fell to his death.”

She didn’t say, he was only thrown from the train because I hadn’t been paying attention and been knocked off my feet so he had to cover for me. She didn’t say, the only reason it was possible was because I hadn’t killed my assailant, giving him the opportunity to come after us again. She didn’t say, I couldn’t reach his hand; if I had only grabbed his hand I could have saved him. Instead, she kept her report short and simple. There was a fight. And she lost. And now Bucky was dead.

When she was dismissed, she walked out of the room numbly, unable to see anything. Her world had been reduced to white noise and light.

“Cap,” Drugan said and reached out to grab her shoulder as she would have walked right by him without even seeing him. The other Commandos stood around him “About Bucky…”

“No…” she said quietly and yanked her arm free. She didn’t want to hear people say they were sorry or offer condolences. She didn’t want people to ask if she was okay, not even her Howling Commandos. So she shook her head and hurried up to the ground level, where the sound of air raid sirens was blaring.

“You can’t go out there right now,” someone tried to yell at her, but she ignored them as she burst out onto the deserted street and started running. She saw smoke curling up from a building in the distance, but she couldn’t be bothered to care she had run outside during a blitz. Because it didn’t matter. How could something like a bomb possibly matter when she had already lost everything?

She stopped in front of the bar where she had asked the Commandos to join her, where she’d asked _Bucky_ to join her. It was in ruins, charred bits of wood and stone lying in piles of rumble. Broken glass covered the visible pieces of floor. This was where she had set him on the path that would lead to his death. So it made sense somehow that it had been destroyed by a bomb.

She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now. In the short term, she could try to find an intact bottle of booze and get drunk, to drown out the awful events of the past day. But then what? How was she supposed to keep going? He was her second in command, her best friend, her lover. And because of her, he was gone.

She could go after Hydra. She could make them pay. She wouldn’t stop until every Hydra agent was dead or captured. But then what? Go back to Brooklyn? Alone? No, she couldn’t think about it. She did manage to find one bottle in the rubble and she held the clear glass up to see the liquid sloshing inside. She would focus on the short-term then. Tomorrow, after all, was another day. And tomorrow she could decide what to do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had skated right by this scene in the parent work. I don't really know why I suddenly wanted to write this out, other than I felt like writing something sad.
> 
> Also, I do think Steve's first move would be to kill the Hydra agent that had knocked Bucky off the train, if he wasn't already dead.


	13. I've Got My Mind Made Up, and I Can't Let Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the events of the the Battle of New York, the Avengers part ways.

Steph settled into a chair in one of the SHIELD common rooms. Everything still hurt, so every movement she made had her gritting her teeth. It was a lot better than the previous day, though, thanks in no small part to her enhanced healing. But she had still cracked a couple of ribs, and had a nasty wound on her side from the battle the previous day. All things considered, she was lucky to be alive. They all were. The six of them had taken on an alien invasion by themselves and had only really managed to win with luck.

Steph shifted and inhaled sharply as pain stabbed her right side. Her whole abdomen was heavily bandaged under the plaid shirt she wore. She wasn’t entirely comfortable in civilian clothes, because she much preferred her uniform from World War II, but was happy for the loose clothing now. She would never wear something as skin-tight as the SHIELD standard-issue uniform. Considering how damaged her Captain America uniform was from the battle, if she was going to keep this up, she would need a new one. Though this time she would have some input on the design. She was done with spandex.

When she had first woken up from the ice, a SHIELD agent who was much more feminine than her had taken her clothes shopping, and kept chastising her for picking the most gender-neutral women’s clothing possible. She was more comfortable in jeans and combat boots than regular women’s clothes.

Once the pain started to fade, Steph slipped a small picture out of her pocket. She had found it while going through old SSR files that SHIELD had accumulated. They had given her papers and papers about her old comrades when she woke up. But she had to go digging for Bucky’s file, because no one thought she would want to look at it. The file ended before Steph had crashed the plane, after all. In it she found a small picture of Bucky, barely bigger than two inches. He was smirking at the camera, and his uniform hat was slightly tilted on his head, just enough to suggest he had a bit of a rebellious streak. It must have been taken before he shipped out, because his didn’t have that cold look in his eyes that came after being captured by Hydra and fighting with the Howling Commandos.

She stared at the picture and felt her stomach twist in a way that had nothing to do with her injuries. She missed Bucky. She missed the Commandos. Hell, she even missed the war. It seemed so much simpler when the bad guys were human. She might have been a super soldier, but she was only one woman. How were normal people supposed to fight against gods, aliens, and monsters? What kind of world had she woken up to?

The Howling Commandos were a good team. They each had different strengths and were able to play off each other, cover their backs, and make up for their individuals weaknesses. While the six… Avengers… if Steph was really going to go with that name, had managed to work together when it mattered, it was as Dr. Banner had said. They weren’t a team, not really. They couldn’t trust each other. Dr. Banner could lose control and turn into a monster that would try to kill them just as likely as he would their enemies. Thor was a god from another planet, and he didn’t seem to really understand human culture. Agents Romanov and Barton were spies, inherently untrustworthy. And then Fury never seemed to tell anyone the whole truth. Stark had no training or self restraint. Steph had to admit that one good thing about Howard’s son was that he didn’t seem to hide anything. He spoke his mind all the time, even if it was incredibly annoying.

After the battle, since most of midtown Manhattan had been destroyed by aliens, SHIELD told the six of them to stay in their New York headquarters while they sorted things out. Steph was very familiar with the place, having lived here when she first woke up from the ice for a few weeks until she got her own apartment (which had been destroyed in the battle). Thor was willing to stay and keep a close eye on Loki, who was even more restrained than he had been when they brought him to the Helicarrier. Thor was apparently planning to take them back to Asgard soon, in the next day or so. Banner reluctantly agreed to stay at SHIELD, under the condition that no one bother him. He still seemed shaken up from having turned into the Hulk twice in a twenty-four hour period. Steph knew Barton and Romanov had to be around somewhere, because they were SHIELD agents, but she so far hadn’t seen them. Stark had outright refused to stay at SHIELD, even though his tower had been the epicenter of the alien invasion. Apparently he had more than one expensive place to stay in New York. That really irked the forties girl inside her who could barely afford the crappiest apartment in Brooklyn.

She looked down at the picture again and ran the pad of her thumb over the slightly matte surface. Sometimes she thought maybe she most missed Bucky’s smile. And then other times she thought it was his eyes she missed most. The black and white photo didn’t do them justice. What she would give just to hear his voice again. Then again, the way he had her back, always. All her life he had looked out for her. When he had shipped out for Europe, she almost didn’t notice the loneliness that caused because she was so busy with training and the procedure and the shows and everything about becoming Captain America. It was like she hadn’t had a moment to breathe and think about it before they were reunited. When he died, she was so overwhelmed with grief and rage that she couldn’t spare a thought for anything else. But now, settling down after yet another life-or-death fight, she realized there was an emptiness. There was supposed to be someone at her side, and he was gone.

“Stare at that picture any harder and you’re going to burn a hole in it, Cap.”

Steph jerked her head up, having not noticed anyone approach. It was hard to catch her off guard these days. Agent Barton dropped down in a chair across from her and propped his feet up on the table. Steph eyed him warily. She had barely spoken more than a few words to Barton, what with him being mind-controlled and then fighting off an alien invasion. In fact, the longest they’d spoken was when she had given him orders during the battle.

“Agent Barton…” she said in greeting and tried to subtilely stash the photo back in her pocket.

Barton set his quiver on the table and then started inspecting the various arrowheads. Steph hadn’t put much stock in bows and arrows as weapons before, but she had to admit that he made it look lethal and effective. “So what’s in the picture?” he asked, very straight-forward, without looking at her.

Steph blinked in surprise. Her hand subconsciously went to her pocket. “An old friend.”

He nodded once, like he had suspected as much. Steph honestly had no idea why he had sat down to talk to her. She couldn’t really get a handle on him, either. He was lethal, deadly, like most highly trained SHIELD agents, but he also threw off this vibe of not caring about anything. Based on how Romanov had been acting while he was brain-washed, he clearly meant a lot to her. And Steph had noticed the looks they had exchanged after the battle. It was very subtle, so much so that she doubted any of their male comrades had noticed. But Steph recognized that look. It was one she had shared with Bucky on many an occasion during the war. It was maybe for that reason that she hadn’t mentioned it. It was their business what they did, and it didn’t affect her.

“Um… Did you need something from me?” she asked after a moment of awkward silence.

“Not really,” he said as he held up one of the arrows to inspect its point. His eyes drifted past the arrow to her. “I was just curious what Captain America would be like out of uniform.”

“What?” Out of context, that could sound like a come-on.

“Well, I saw you doing the ass-kicking, shield-bashing thing.” He smirked at her. “Very impressive, by the way. But that stuff’s all in the history books. Not really much about Captain America being an actual, real person.”

Steph leaned back in her chair carefully, mindful of her wounds. While Hawkeye hadn’t sustained any major injuries during the battle, he was covered with cuts and bruises. Something about having gone through a window. “I suppose this is me being a regular person, then. Steph Rogers, nice to meet you.”

He smiled and set down the arrow he had been examining. “Clint Barton. Nice to officially meet you.”

Steph smiled lightly in response. “So you read about Captain America in history books?”

“Nah, not me. But Coulson was obsessed. Nat and I would be surrounded and trying to shoot as many hostiles as possible, and then Coulson would be talking in our ears about how it reminded him of this Captain America story. And then he just had to tell us right there.” Barton smiled and shook his head as he went back to his arrows.

Steph watched him. “Did you know him well? I’d only just met him before…”

“Yeah, the three of us worked together a lot.” Barton didn’t meet her eyes.

Steph thought back to what she had said to Tony on the Helicarrier, and his response. “He was a good man.” Tony had called him an idiot.

Barton didn’t. Instead, he said, “Good men always die first.” He slid the arrow back into its place in his quiver.

Steph’s hand went to her pocket again, and she could feel the stiffness of the photo inside it, but she didn’t take it out again. She didn’t need to, because she had practically committed Bucky’s smiling face to memory. And always, always superimposed over it was his face as he fell.

“Guess that’s why we’re still alive.” He smirked up at her, but the grin looked strained. “I’m no good, and you’re not a man. So we’re safe.”

Steph looked at him. If maybe more than before, she couldn’t figure Clint Barton out. Movement caught her eye and she looked up to see Natasha Romanov approach. She slid into a chair next to Barton. She moved so gracefully that she almost appeared to glide rather than walk.

“Are you harassing the good captain?” Natasha asked.

“Nope. We are having a pleasant conversation, right Cap?” Barton grinned at her.

Steph smiled. “Hello Agent Romanov.”

Natasha inclined her head. “Captain Rogers. Barton here has a habit of annoying people on his downtime out of boredom. I hope he hasn’t been causing you too much trouble.”

“Hey!” Barton said before she could answer. “I don’t do that.”

“Do you or do you not shoot arrows out of the ventilation shafts at the new recruits when you’re bored?”

“Okay, I do that. But they should think of it as an initiation. They want to work for SHIELD, after all.”

“And set up trip wires in the common rooms, especially around food tables.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“And hang out on catwalks so you can throw darts down on anyone who walks by?”

“What’s your point?”

Natasha looked at Steph. “This is why Fury sends him on so many missions, to get him away from SHIELD headquarters.”

Steph couldn’t help it, she laughed. The sound surprised her so much that she immediately stopped. It was so foreign to her ears. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had really laughed. It had been so long, decades and decades ago, maybe even before the procedure that lead her to this eventual point.

A small smile touched Natasha’s lips.

“Oh, Captain, my Captain!” a voice said from behind Steph.

She rolled her eyes and turned around carefully in her chair to see Tony Stark walking toward them. Unlike the T-shirt he had been wearing last time she’d seen him, this time he was wearing a suit. “Yes, Stark?” she asked frostily.

He smirked. “I’ve been waiting to use that one. Trust me, I have plenty more waiting for the perfect moment.” He looked at Barton and Romanov. “Oh, good. You two are here too.”

“What are you doing here, Stark?” Steph asked. “I thought you couldn’t stand SHIELD?”

He lifted the case she hadn’t noticed he was holding. “Selvig and I found out how to send Thor and his psychotic little brother back to Asgard. I’m here to fetch them.” He grinned. “Thought you four would like to see them off, since you were directly involved.”

“Four?” Steph asked.

“He means me, as well,” Dr. Banner said from the doorway behind Stark.

“Come on. Who’s up for a trip to the park?” Stark looked like he would allow no arguments.

It turned out they would have had to go anyway, because a whole SHIELD detail was needed to escort Loki to Central Park. They couldn’t do it from SHIELD’s headquarters. There was some mumbo-jumbo about needing clear access to the sky without buildings in the way. But personally, Steph thought Tony liked the idea of making SHIELD scurry around.

She was about to join the others in a SHIELD car, but Tony pulled her aside. “I found something you may like.” Parked in the garage next to his very fancy red sports car was a motorcycle.

“I thought that was destroyed during the battle,” Steph said. She had picked that bike because it reminded her of the one she used in the war. While she had never been really attached to material things, especially when there were things so much more important that she had lost, she was still disappointed at losing the bike.

“Just buried under some rubble. I cleaned it up.” He put his hands in his pockets and grinned at her. “Thought you might want it back.”

Steph ran her hand over the seat and smiled. “Thanks, Tony… I…” She looked at him.

“No sweat, Cap. I figured heroes deserve fancy rides. You don’t want to drive around in a SHIELD car, right?”

Steph smiled wryly. “Is that the reason for this?” she said as she waved her hand at Tony’s car.

“Hey, any excuse to show off.”

“You certainly do take any opportunity to show off.”

“What can I say?” He shrugged, still smiling lightly.

She looked at him. “Really, Tony. Thank you.”

“Anything for Captain America. Now come on, I think we’ve got an interstellar wormhole to create.” He headed for his own car just as the last of the SHIELD detail had things packed up.

At the park, Steph kept her distance as she watched the scientists handle the tesseract. She was pleased it was going with Thor, away from human hands. That thing had already caused too much damage, and cost too many lives.

Once Thor and Loki were gone, the six of them stepped closer together from the loose circle they had been standing in around the Asgardians.

“Dr Selvig, thanks for your help. It’s been a pleasure.” Tony held out his hand and Selvig shook it.

He smiled a little guiltily. “A lot of what happened was from my science. So I figured I had to set it right. Thank you, everyone, for stopping that…” He nodded at them, gave Barton a side-eyed glance and then walked back over to the SHIELD truck. That left the five of them.

Dr. Banner crossed his arms. “I’m going to go with Tony. See if I can do some good here, instead. I have a feeling SHIELD isn’t the place for me.”

“Yeah, we realized that when you took your stuff with you,” Barton said.

“You will do good, Bruce,” Natasha said with a small smile. “And you did good here. You and the Hulk.”

She walked over to the matte black car she and Barton took to retrieve Banner’s bag. As they did, Steph moved over to the side of Tony’s car, where he was waiting. She held out her hand. He looked at her and then shook it, holding on perhaps a moment longer than was necessary.

“What about you?” he asked.

“What about me?” She looked at him.

“Are you sticking with SHIELD? Those two,” he nodded over to Barton and Natasha, “they’re already SHIELD agents. You weren’t. You’re actually… honorable. Which is more than can be said about any of the rest of us. You don’t have to work with SHIELD to help people.”

“Wow, Tony.” Steph smiled. “Since when did you sound like such a hero?”

“I’m serious, Steph. I’ve got a bad feeling about SHIELD, and it’s not just cause I’ve constantly been an asshole to them.”

“I’m still a soldier. SHIELD is where I belong. Dont worry, I’ll be careful.”

“Well, if you ever need any help, you know how to find me.”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “And if you ever need help from someone in a spangly outfit, let me know.”

“You do make it look good.” He nodded at the other three. “Later, Cap.”

Dr. Banner walked over to Tony’s car with his bag. “Captain,” he said as he shook her hand.

“Good luck, Dr. Banner.” She smiled. “Most of all with him,” she said as she indicated Tony.

“Hey,” he said from the driver’s side of the car.

Dr. Banner smiled to acknowledge the joke. “You too, Steph. Good luck.”

She stepped back and watched them drive off, and then waved to the other two before getting on her own bike. She didn’t go back to SHIELD. Instead, she decided to go somewhere she’d be avoiding since she woke up. Getting through traffic was easy enough on her bike, and before she knew it, she was crossing the bridge into her old neighborhood. She hadn’t been back to Brooklyn since she left after the procedure. During the war, she never had a chance, and after she woke up… it was too painful.

But now she was ready to make peace with her past, and move forward. She was meant to be here, even if she’d gotten to this century in an unconventional way. Her strength was meant to help people. She’d forgotten that amidst her grief. But now she had a purpose again. Saying goodbye to the streets she’d grown up on was the first step on accepting that purpose. But the picture of Bucky stayed in her pocket.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nnn... I don't really have anything to say about this one.


	14. The Streets are Filled with Starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Bucky nightmares. Less attempts to kill Steph.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is ridiculously sappy. Like, I even impressed myself by how sappy this is. Enjoy.

The first time Bucky had a nightmare, or a flashback, or whatever exactly it was, Steph had been caught completely off guard. She was asleep, so of course she was off guard. By the time she woke up enough to really fight back, the Winter Soldier had her pinned to the wall with his hand on her throat. She tried to call his name, over and over, even though she couldn’t draw breath and was already becoming lightheaded. She barely managed to hook a few fingers under his metal ones to try to pry them off her neck, though they didn’t budge. She used the other hand to try to pull his arm away and she kicked her bare feet at his chest as hard as she could.

She may have been a super soldier, and far stronger than the average human, but the Winter Soldier’s cybernetic arm was stronger. In all honesty, if Bucky hadn’t come back to his senses on his own, he probably would have killed her. For both their sakes, Steph decided she wouldn’t let that happen again.

Steph was normally a light sleeper, so the next time it happened, she was up in an instant and over to the side of the bed. She crouched there, one naked foot on the floor, and her other knee up on the bed, waiting to see which direction she would need to move.

Bucky’s left hand clenched and unclenched into a fist, over and over. Sometimes it looked like it was searching for a throat to crush. Not for the first time, she wondered if she should take Tony up on his offer to look at the arm, see if there was any lingering damage from how Hydra had designed it and maintained it.

Suddenly Bucky shot up into a sitting position, every muscle in his body tense. Steph tensed as well. He had a knife in his right hand, and she had no idea where it came from. Her shield was leaning against the wall by the bed, and she knew she would be able to reach it in one quick stride, but she didn’t want to grab it unless she had to. So she held her breath and waited.

Bucky’s eyes were open, but he clearly was not awake. His eyes were blown black, pupils completely dilated, and unseeing. He breathed hard through gritted teeth, but made no other movement, even though he clenched the knife in his fist.

Steph swiped her tongue across her dry lips and swallowed hard before saying softly, “Bucky?” He didn’t react, so she tried again. “Bucky, can you hear me? You’re okay… You’re safe…”

Bucky clenched his left fist again and then blinked. His eyes cleared and he turned to look at Steph half crouched on the edge of the bed.

“Steph?” he asked, confused. But then his eyes widened and he looked around. He dropped the knife over the edge of the bed as if it had burned him. “Are you okay? Did I attack you?”

Steph let go of the breath she’d been holding. “I’m fine. You didn’t.” She moved across the bed quickly and sat in front of him. “Are you okay?”

He looked at her and ran his metal fingers through his hair in agitation. “You’re sure? I could have hurt you again.”

“You didn’t.” She kneeled in front of him and pushed him to look at her before sitting back on her knees so their eyes were at the same level. “You really are okay, right?”

“Yes, it was… a memory. But it felt… It was a memory I hadn’t remembered, and it felt like I was reliving it,” he said bitterly. She knew he couldn’t help the way his brain recalled things, and she knew he hated that he had no control over this. He looked at her again, and his eyes moved over her exposed skin, and the edges of the nightshirt she wore. He gently slid his hands up her arms, just ghosting his fingertips over her skin. It took her a moment to realize he was checking for injuries.

“I’m okay,” she said to interrupt him. “You didn’t try to attack at all.”

He glanced down at the knife lying on the floor.

“Hey,” she said quietly and ran her fingers through his hair, turning his face back towards hers. “You didn’t. That’s improvement, right?”

“I suppose.” He looked at her, and she was pleased to see his eyes were back to the same blue-gray that she loved.

So she leaned forward and kissed him softly. He responded in kind and moved his right hand up to cup the side of her face, before sliding his hand around to the back of her head, keeping her close. She pulled away after a moment and rested her forehead against his, keeping her eyes closed.

“You had a nightmare and didn’t try to kill anyone.” She smiled just a bit. “I’m going to take that as a sign of progress.”

“Especially from last time…” She felt his hand on her neck, and opened her eyes, but didn’t move. He slid his fingers along the side of her neck, careful as if he was going over a bruise, but it had long since healed.

“I told you that you wouldn’t catch me off guard again.”

“Still…” he whispered.

“Still nothing.” She put her hand over his fingers and carefully moved them off her neck so she could squeeze his hand. She smiled and kissed him once, softly. “Do you think you’ll be able to get back to sleep or are you awake now?”

He sighed and looked out the window, checking to see that it really was still full-dark. Dawn wouldn’t be coming for a couple hours yet. “No, I’ve slept enough…”

To be honest, it was probably more sleep than he usually got in a night. She noticed he could only ever sleep a few hours at a time. But then again, it had taken Steph a while after waking up from the ice to be able to sleep through the night.

“Then I have an idea. Come on.” She moved off his lap and jumped out of the bed. “Let’s go for a walk. It’ll make you feel better.”

He looked at her and the barest smile touched his lips. “You have interesting ideas about comfort,” he said, but then he did stand up.

Steph dragged on some jeans and threw on a jacket over her nightshirt. The cold never really bothered her much anymore, probably because her metabolism made her run so much hotter, but it was still the middle of the night. She waited for Bucky to pull on his hoodie and then they walked out into the cold air.

No one was out at this time, and only a few cars were driving by, either people coming back from an extremely late night, or heading out for an extremely early morning. She glanced at him and then hooked her finger around one of his on his right hand. He looked over at her, and then down at their hands.

He captured another finger with his and then said, “We used to do this, didn’t we?”

Steph’s throat felt tight, so she just nodded. It was one thing for him to remember the big things: falling, missions, the factory, making love for the first time. But it was another when he remembered the quieter in between moments. She wrapped her fingers completely around his, holding his hand tightly. “Yeah, when he were trying to not be too obvious.” She paused. “We don’t have to worry about that now, I guess.”

“No, we don’t.” He stopped her by tugging her hand and she turned to face him. Before she could open her mouth to ask what was up, his other hand went to her face and he kissed her, long and hard. When he pulled back, he said, “There. Seventy years in coming.”

She smiled and leaned into his hand. “I love you,” she said quietly.

“I love you too.”

They stayed like that for a moment, and then she eventually pulled him back into their slow-paced walk. She held tightly to his hand and eventually asked him about his dream, and listened quietly as he told her about the memory. By the time they had done a complete circle and arrived back at her apartment, the sky was showing the faintest traces of light. And even if he didn't admit it, she could tell he felt better. So yes, this was progress.


	15. With Every Broken Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's arm starts to cause him pain. There's only one person Steph can think of who can fix it.

Steph didn’t notice it at first, otherwise she probably would have come to her decision sooner. But then one morning, Bucky shifted his left arm, and tried to turn away from her, but she still saw him wince. It was barely there, but that made Steph worry all the more. She knew he was completely desensitized to pain, so if whatever was hurting him was bad enough to make him react, then it was really bad.

She immediately walked over. “Are you injured?” she asked, her eyes raking over his body. He was covered with scars, but no visible wounds or bruises.

She skimmed her fingers up his side, checking for cracked or broken ribs, but everything seemed fine, and that was even more troubling. That was when she noticed the skin of his left shoulder looked very red. Was the scar tissue there always so red? She touched it tenderly, and he winced again.

“It’s your arm…” she said slowly, looking at his face. He hadn’t moved or tried to stop her. “What’s wrong? Why didn’t you say anything?”

He seemed a bit surprised by her concern, so she had to bite back the yell sitting on the tip of her tongue. Of course she would be worried if he was in pain!

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Does it hurt?” She looked him levelly in the eye, daring him to lie to her.

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “It doesn’t hinder movement and there is nothing to stop it. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”

“What do you mean?”

He held up his arm so he could look at it. He slowly clenched the metal hand into a fist. “I’ve never gone this long without… maintenance. I haven’t been out of cryofreeze this long, either. I don’t think it was built to go long periods of time without being repaired.”

“They probably didn’t want you to be able to escape and then attack them…” Steph sighed. A thought was forming in her mind that she didn’t really like.

“Sounds like Hydra. I also never had it repaired after…” he looked at her, “our fight on the Helicarrier.”

Steph bit her lip. She knew the worst damage she did to the cybernetic arm was during their fight on the causeway, and that had been repaired when they fought again, she had noticed. She had dislocated his other shoulder in her effort get back the computer chip. By the time he showed up that night in her apartment, that shoulder was healed. But whatever damage his left arm had taken would still be there. The super soldier serum would heal his body, but it couldn’t heal that arm.

Bucky looked at the knuckles of his metal hand as if he could still see blood there, from the beating he had given her face during that last fight. Steph carefully placed her hands over his.

“Then we need to take care of this.”

“As far as I know, Hydra are the only ones who know what maintenance this arm needs. Or what could be wrong with it.” He looked at her, not trying to argue, but stating a fact.

“It’s a good thing I know a tech genius,” she said.

That was when a clouded look came over his face. “Stark?”

“Yeah.” She hesitated and pulled her hands back. “He offered. Not because he’s that generous,” she said quickly. “He’s interested in the technology. But if something is wrong, he’s probably the best person to figure out what it is and fix it.” She looked at his face. “Don’t worry, I won’t let him go crazy and try to completely take it apart.” She smiled to show she was joking.

“I don’t trust him,” he said, the dark look still on his face.

Several things jumped to her mind. Do you trust anyone? Well, you certainly aren’t alone in not trusting Stark. Ultimately, what she said was not biting at all. “I do.”

He looked at her for a long time without saying anything. “You were always too quick to trust people.”

“You will find that has changed recently,” she said quietly. “But still, I trust Tony. And if he can’t fix your arm, no one can.”

They stared each other down, waiting to see who would relent first. Finally, Bucky sighed in exasperation. “Fine.”

Steph smiled. “Good. I’ll… I’ll let him know beforehand. I’m sure he’ll want to, um, make arrangements.”

“You mean warn people to stay away just in case I turn violent?”

“Yes, that. Also, it will probably be easier, the fewer people who see you…” She looked at him. When she had noticed him wince, she had been on her way out, because she was supposed to meet Sam. They had been taking out Hydra cells, and keeping them off Bucky’s trail. And he was going to go do whatever it was he did during the day. She knew he followed her sometimes. It was more of a watching to cover her in case of surprise attacks thing than creepy stalker watching. But she had no idea where he went when he didn’t do that. But he always came back after dark, every night.

She glanced at the window where the sun was fully risen. “I have to go… But I’ll let you know what Tony says.”

He nodded once and shrugged on the jacket he usually wore to hide his arm. It was too late in the morning for him to sneak out through the fire escape, like he normally did, so he headed for the front door.

“Bucky,” she said suddenly.

He turned quickly at her tone of voice, but before he could ask anything, she grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him. She felt him smile under her lips.

“See you tonight…” she whispered, and then let him go.

On her way to meet Sam, she called Tony.

“Hey, Cap. What’s up?”

“Tony, do you remember what you said when you visited me a couple months ago?” Automatically, her eyes roamed back and forth across the street, looking for potential attackers.

“You didn’t lose your shield again, did you?” he asked.

She smiled despite herself. “No, I did not. The other thing you said…”

“About building your homicidal boyfriend a better arm?”

Steph sighed. “Please do not call him that.”

“It’s accurate.”

Steph stopped walking for a moment so she could take a deep breath. “Tony. There’s a problem. He wouldn’t say exactly what it is, or he doesn’t know. But I think the arm is causing him a lot of pain.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then, “That’s interesting.”

“Interesting in a good way or interesting in a bad way?” She started walking again, but much slower.

“Interesting in an interesting way. I told you that it looked too heavy when I watched footage of you two fighting. But I would need to see it myself to actually determine what’s wrong.”

“So does that mean… you’d be willing to fix it?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Is he going to try to strangle me the second I touch his arm?”

His choice of words was very deliberate. He was never going to let her forget what had happened that one night when Bucky had a nightmare in her presence for the first time. “He won’t. He’s not… He doesn’t lose control anymore.”

“At all?” Tony asked in such a way that showed he could read between the lines.

“Not often.”

“So he does lose control sometimes. That’s encouraging.” He still said it in the same deadpan voice he had been using the whole conversation. If she didn’t know better, she would think Tony really never did take anything seriously. But he had been very serious two years ago in New York.

“He hasn’t tried to attack me or anyone else again, though.” She stopped walking. “I don’t think he will try to attack you. But I can’t guarantee he won’t. All I can say is that we’re pretty evenly matched in a fight, so I’m confident I can stop him if he does lose control.”

Tony sighed like he suddenly had to give up on something fun. “You’re so serious, Cap. I’ll poke around at the arm. When can you get to New York?”

“Tomorrow? We can take the train—”

“The train, really? When I have private jets?” He almost sounded offended at her suggestion of taking public transportation.

“Somehow, I think Bucky will do better in a crowd of strangers, than ten thousand feet in the air in a pressurized metal tube, especially one owned by Stark Industries.”

“Have it your way.”

“Is anyone else at Stark Tower? Maybe you should warn people…”

“Bruce comes and goes, but somehow I don’t think your assassin boyfriend will be much of a threat to him.” He paused. “Pepper’s out of town.”

Steph nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “That’s probably… better. Thank you, Tony. Really. You’re the only person I actually trust for this.”

“I’m also the only person you know who can actually figure out what’s wrong.”

“That’s true. Still. Thank you, Tony,” she said sincerely, pausing outside the cafe where she was meeting Sam.

“No problem, Cap. See you tomorrow.”

Steph hung up and looked at her cell phone. She was used to Tony joking about everything, whether he was trying to cover up actual emotions or not. That made it hard to tell what he was actually thinking sometimes. She probably wouldn’t know until she saw him face-to-face, anyway. So she tried to shake off the idea that his voice sounded strange on the phone.

 

Steph had been right about taking the train verse taking a private jet. Bucky had gotten quite good at blending into crowds since his escape from Hydra, and he seemed much more comfortable pretending to be an anonymous stranger. He wore a baseball cap and a hoodie baggy enough to hide his arm. He kept his left hand in the pocket of the jacket the whole time. She knew he probably had at least one or two weapons on him, but she didn’t ask about them.

Steph wore her Brooklyn Dodgers cap to hide her face. She seemed to have become more recognizable after everything that had happened. But hiding her identity was more for Bucky’s sake than hers. If they noticed her, they would notice him. And she didn’t want to see how he’d react to that.

When he saw the baseball cap, he smiled lightly and said, “Where did you find that?”

“One of the benefits of working for SHIELD. They were really good at finding old things.”

No one paid them any attention on the train, but Bucky never relaxed. He appeared to blend into the background and keep an eye on everything at the same time. Steph kept an eye on him, rather than the other passengers, just to make sure he could handle being stuck on something for more than three hours. She also noticed when and how he favored his left side. How could she have only recently noticed how bad it had gotten?

They arrived in Manhattan in the late morning. Steph had resisted the urge to take the earliest train out, because she knew they would get to New York before Tony was even awake. Surely it was reasonable to expect him to be up by eleven, however. She hoped.

Stark Tower certainly did look different from the last time she had seen it, but then, it had been falling apart under an interstellar wormhole the last time she saw it. A pretty blonde and petite receptionist stood up when they walked in. Beside Steph, Bucky stilled, eyeing the woman warily.

“Welcome, Captain Rogers,” the receptionist said. Her eyes flickered to Bucky, but otherwise she didn’t acknowledge him. “Mr. Stark is expecting you two. Take elevator three, it goes all the way to the top.”

“Thank you…” Steph said. She stayed between Bucky and the woman as they walked across the marble lobby. It reminded her remarkably of the SHIELD headquarters in Washington, DC, which had been destroyed by crashing helicarriers (and her own aerial entrance through the glass roof). But that was probably just the gray color scheme and echoing floors. After all, there was no giant metal and glass eagle in the middle of the lobby.

While Steph rested against the handrail in the elevator with her hands folded in front of her, Bucky stood off to one side, silently alert. He noticed the security camera immediately and tilted his face down so the brim of his cap covered his eyes. Steph wasn’t even sure he did it on purpose. At this point, it was probably habit.

There was no music, and Steph was actually thankful for that. There were also no buttons, but they didn’t have to say where they were going like she had to in SHIELD HQ elevators. The doors closed by themselves and the elevator rose through the building. In no time at all, it dinged, and the doors opened to a much lighter, open space.

When Steph stepped out, a warm, British voice said, “Good morning, Captain Rogers.”

Steph smiled. “Hello, Jarvis.” She glanced back at Bucky to see he had stopped halfway out the elevator and was looking for the source of the disembodied voice. “It’s Tony’s AI,” she told him. “It’s okay.”

He looked at her, and then nodded before following her out.

“Where is Tony?” Steph asked.

“Mr. Stark is in Workshop 2,” Jarvis’s voice said.

“Oh, good. I was worried he wouldn’t be awake, or something.” She turned down a hallway to the right, towards the labs.

“Perhaps you should wait, however.”

Steph stopped at that. “Why?”

“Mr. Stark is…”

Before Jarvis could finish, a door a little ways down the hall burst open and Tony walked out. He grinned when he saw her. “Jarvis, why didn’t you just let them in?” He walked up to Steph. “Hey, Cap.”

“Hi Tony.” Up close, he looked like shit, like he hadn’t been sleeping again. Although, that wasn’t that unusual for him. There was something else, too, but Steph couldn’t put her finger on it.

Tony glanced past Steph and looked at Bucky. The two seemed to size each other up for a moment, and neither made any move toward the other. “So you’re the Winter Soldier. Or do you go by Barnes again?”

Bucky glanced at her. She called him by his old name, and he responded to it, but she knew he had trouble claiming what he considered a dead man’s name, no matter how much she tried to convince him he really was still Bucky.

“Barnes is fine,” he said at last.

“Alright. So you got an old Nazi arm that needs fixing? Or is it Soviet?” Tony turned and waved for them to follow him back towards the workshop.

Bucky glanced at her again, and the hesitation was clear on his face, or maybe she had gotten better at reading his mood. So she tried to give him what she thought was an encouraging smile and followed Tony into the workshop. A moment later, Bucky followed her, but he stayed near the door, and well away from any of the tables, tools, or large mechanical objects.

The place was in disarray, not that Steph had expected Tony to keep it particularly neat. There were papers and various metal parts on every surface, and she could identify body parts from what had to be more than one Iron Man suit. Tony moved over to one of the tables and knocked some things onto the floor: papers, a metal cannister, a few tools. They clattered to the floor loudly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Bucky narrow his eyes. Steph frowned. “Tony, are you okay?”

He waved off her question and leaned back against the table casually. “So you were one of the Howling Commandos, right?” he asked Bucky as he crossed his arms.

Bucky jerked his head in an affirmative, but said nothing else.

“So you worked with Cap and the rest of them during World War II. That means you must have known my dad, right?”

Now Steph narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Tony…” she said warningly, unsure where exactly he was going.

“Just making friendly conversation, Cap.” He kept his eyes on Bucky, and no longer had that good-natured smile. “You must have worked with my father, right?”

“Yes…” Bucky said slowly. He hadn’t moved from just inside the door.

“So did you feel anything? When you killed him?”

The unsettled feeling she had been having turned into ringing alarms in her head. She stepped forward immediately to get between them, with a glance back at Bucky to see his reaction. He hadn’t moved, or visibly tensed at all. “Tony, that’s enough.”

“No, Cap, I want to know.” He moved to sidestep around her, glaring at Bucky. “He was your friend, wasn’t he? And you killed him. You killed my parents!”

This close, Steph realized what had been off. Tony was drunk. Before noon, Tony was drunk. She put her hand on his shoulder, holding him back. “Stop it, Tony. You’re drunk.”

He tried to shake her off, but she held fast. However, he kept his attention on Bucky. “What do you have to say for yourself, you bastard? You fucking murderer!”

“Stop it, Stark!” Steph yelled in response and slammed him back into the table. “Or I swear to god, I am going to call Pepper right now and tell her you are drunk off your ass in the middle of the day trying to pick a fight with a trained assassin! And I will kick your ass!”

Tony finally turned his attention back to her, but his eyes were slightly glazed. “Get off me.” He tried to shove her off again, and this time she let him. She took a step back, but stayed in front of Bucky.

“Go lie down, Tony.”

He looked at her, then sneered at Bucky, and then he grabbed a half-full glass bottle of amber-colored liquid off the floor and headed for the second door out of the workshop. Steph stood there for a moment, watching the door, just to make sure he wasn’t coming back for more. She finally turned to look at Bucky. She expected him to, well, to have reacted somehow, especially considering how his flashbacks affected him. But he looked the same.

She frowned and walked back over to his side. “Are you okay? I’m sorry about that…”

He looked at her. “His anger is justified. I did kill Howard Stark.”

Steph sighed. “I know. But that wasn’t you. You weren’t in control then.”

“Does it matter? I still killed them.”

“That was Hydra, not you,” she said firmly. “It wasn’t your fault. They killed Howard, not you, not Bucky Barnes.”

“I’m not always Bucky Barnes,” he said, looking at her calmly. “I’m also the Winter Soldier, and the Winter Soldier killed Tony Stark’s parents.”

Steph sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “Okay, but… it wasn’t your choice or your decision… It wasn’t like you wanted to.”

He opened his mouth, perhaps to argue with her more, but then he closed it. He glanced back at the disaster zone that was Tony’s workshop and clenched his metal hand a couple times. She remembered why they’d come and suddenly got angry, at Tony for getting stupidly drunk, at herself for not thinking what effect seeing Bucky might have on him, at Hydra for putting them in this position in the first place.

“Come on…” she said at last, opening the door. She peeked out to make sure Tony wasn’t lurking in his Iron Man suit, and then lead Bucky back to the main common room off the elevator. “I suppose we’re going to be here until Tony sobers back up,” she said quietly. “Unless you would rather go back to DC?”

He looked at her, and he did actually seem to consider her question, but then he twitched his left hand again and shook his head.

She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Bruce walking out of the other side hallway. “Steph?” he asked curiously and walked over to them. “Tony mentioned you might be coming by today.”

“Hey, Bruce.” She turned fully to face him.

He stopped in front of her. “I take it you did see him, based on the yelling I heard.”

“He’s drunk,” she said. “In the morning.”

Bruce shook his head. “I don’t think he ever went to sleep. He’s still drunk from when he started drinking last night, from what I figure.” He looked past Steph at Bucky, but didn’t give him the side-eyed glance most people usually did. Instead he held out his hand. “I’m Bruce Banner. You must be Sergeant Barnes.”

Bucky looked at the hand for a moment and then he surprised her by taking it and shaking it once before quickly dropping his hand back to his side. She wondered if he would have still done that if he had to use his metal hand. “I’m not a Sergeant anymore,” he said flatly.

Bruce studied him curiously. “You’re her Sergeant,” he said, half nodding to Steph.

Steph blinked at him in surprise. She didn’t expect something like that from Bruce. “So what did Tony do?” he asked, looking between them, rather than just directing his question at Steph.

“Yelled,” Steph said. “Blamed Bucky for, um, his parents’ deaths…”

Bruce nodded. “He didn’t threaten you? He’d been working on some pretty serious additions to his Iron Man suits.”

Steph shook her head. “I threatened him first. With Pepper.”

Bruce smiled widely. “That would make him listen.” He shook his head again. “Well, there are plenty of rooms here if you want to stay. I’m sure Tony will be less… well, drunk, when he sobers up.” He looked at Bucky. “He does actually want to take a look at that arm. It’s pretty impressive piece of technology, from what we’ve seen in the footage. And If you’re up to it, I’d like to get you into an MRI. If the arm is causing neurological damage, I may be able to see how, and help Tony fix it.”

Steph opened her mouth in surprise. “Wow, um, thanks Bruce.” She glanced back at Bucky to see he had tensed up again. “Or… no…?” she asked quietly.

“You’re going to put me in another machine?” His voice was low, barely a rumble.

“No, no, not like that.” She turned to face him again and rested her hand on his right arm. “Just to see what’s going on. Of course you don’t have to do it if you don’t want, but it could really help.”

He looked into her eyes and then let out a long, low breath. “Fine.” He looked at Bruce. “Yeah, that’d be… fine.”

Bruce looked between them, and she knew he was putting things together, but he didn’t say anything. While she had talked to some people about Bucky—Tony, Sam, Nat—no one had seen her interact with Bucky. “There’s a really good Chinese place nearby,” he said. “They don’t mind delivering to the Tower. I was going to order lunch from there. Do you want some?”

Steph glanced at Bucky again, and then said, “Chinese sounds great.”

So they sat around the common room eating out of paper containers. It wasn’t the first time Bucky had Chinese food, but it was still a new experience for him. However, he understood rice and noodles. Bruce used chopsticks like an old pro, but Steph and Bucky still had to use forks. She had tried out chopsticks once and found them much too awkward, even for her dexterous artist’s fingers, and so she had never even suggested them to Bucky.

While they ate, they talked about small things and around the bigger ones. Bruce discussed some of his projects and experiments, though a lot of the science went over Steph’s head. He asked about DC, how the hunt was going to weed out Hydra bases. She asked about what it was like to live at Stark Tower. Bucky rarely spoke up, but Bruce made a point to not keep him out of the conversation.

Through the whole thing, Tony never reappeared. After lunch, Bruce showed them around more of the Tower, what he called the “Avengers levels,” with rooms ready in case any of them needed them, gyms and training rooms, labs and workshops, armories and arsenals.

Steph walked into one of the training rooms, and Jarvis offered her simulation training. So she was curious to see what Tony had set up. She shrugged off her jacket and loosened her sleeves and told Jarvis to give her what he had. It was well-made, she decided. The two boys watched from outside the room as she worked her way through a disaster scenario.

When she finished, Bucky was looking at her with his arms crossed and his feet splayed. Everything about his posture screamed tension. None of it had been real, but she realized it made him nervous watching her fight like that.

“Want to give it a try?” she asked him.

He looked at the now-empty training room and then back at her.

“Or maybe just sparring?”

He tilted his head slightly, but some of the tension left his body. She wondered if he was going to say no, too afraid he would revert to the Winter Soldier, which was how he had been the last few times they fought. However, he nodded jerkily and stepped into the room with her.

It was interesting, facing off against Bucky when she knew he wasn’t trying to kill her. She had certainly seen the way he moved before, and she knew they could be pretty evenly matched. The whole time, she kept her eyes on him, looking for any sign that he was losing control. But no, he was fine. He was just Bucky.

Bruce watched them for a while. Maybe he was interested in the sparring match, or maybe he was also watching for any reaction from Bucky that he was slipping. “Well, you kids have fun,” he said at last, which was hilarious considering both of them had been born before him, but were physically younger. “I have work to get back to.” He waved and walked out.

Steph swore Bucky let her win, when she had him pinned. He denied it, but she had a feeling he was afraid to go too hard against her, considering he had almost killed her on multiple occasions. So she didn’t push it.

When they went back out to the common room, she could tell it was much later in the day. And still no Tony. They were sitting and talking quietly when Bruce found them again.

“Tony is completely passed out. Hope you don’t mind staying until tomorrow,” he said.

Steph sighed and ran her hand through her hair. “I figured…”

“Since Tony isn’t going to do anything else today, I’ve love to get that brain scan, if you’re up to it.” Bruce looked at Bucky.

Steph looked at him too. She wanted desperately to say yes, but she knew this had to be his choice. He had enough bad experiences with machines that messed with his head. He looked at her for a moment and then looked at Bruce. “Okay.”

“Lab is this way,” Bruce said and they followed him. His workspace was much, much neater than Tony’s. There were several, to be honest, frightening-looking machines spread around the room. Bruce indicated one that looked like a bench with a big round piece of machinery around one end.

Bucky stilled when he saw it, his eyes taking in the enclosed scanner. He didn’t like enclosed spaces. He didn’t like not being able to see. He didn’t like being vulnerable.

Steph gently took his hand. “I’ll be right here,” she said softly, and then gave him her best reassuring smile.

“It will only take a few minutes,” Bruce said. His tone of voice was matter-of-fact.

Bucky’s eyes searched her face, looking for any indication of hesitation. He nodded at last and moved over to the machine. Bruce told him to lie down, and he did as instructed. He kept perfectly still when Bruce told him not to move.

Steph kept her hands clasped around her elbows as she watched the lights in the machine moved around Bucky’s head, and she wondered what it was seeing. She wondered if it would make any sense. She was afraid Bruce would look at the scan and declare Bucky a lost cause, too ruined by Hydra. Or maybe he wouldn’t find anything wrong and Bucky’s brain would look like every other brain, and he wouldn’t be able to tell what was causing him pain.

Steph moved to stand beside Bruce at the computer, and watched as the image slowly appeared on the screen. Bruce dropped his glasses onto his face and looked at different angles of the scan. The more he looked at it, the more he frowned. And Steph was too scared to ask what he saw. She didn’t even notice when the scan finished and Bucky slid out so he could sit up on the bench and watch them.

“Here,” Bruce indicated a darkened area of the front of the brain scan. “This is scarring. Normally you get this from surgery, but in this case, it’s from electric shocks.” He rotated the scan slightly. “This is the part they attacked, to keep him from retaining short-term memories, so they wouldn’t become long-term memories. And this is why he was able to follow orders. They went after this area so he couldn’t make decisions on his own.” He was practically talking to himself as he continued to look through the layers of the scan. “They did it over and over again. See this? These are multiple layers of scar tissue.”

“Then why can I remember now?”

Steph jumped when she heard Bucky’s voice, and looked back at him. She tried to reign in her expression, but she knew her eyes were still wide.

“Because they stopped doing it,” Bruce said calmly. “You and Steph, you heal remarkably fast, even your brain tissue, which I didn’t think was possible. Your arm, however, that’s another story. It is sending electrical pulses along your nerves up to the part of your brain that controls motor function. Leave it any longer, and you’re going to have trouble moving, and not just your left arm, but the rest of your body too.”

“So then we really do need Tony to take a look at it tomorrow,” Steph said. She tried to keep her voice from shaking. She knew Hydra did awful things to Bucky, that they erased his memories and conditioned him to obeying their commands. She knew he had visible scars, the most obvious of which was metal fused to his body. But this left scars on his brain. Somehow that was even worse than scarring his flesh.

“Yes,” Bruce said. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t do something stupid like get drunk again.”

“Thanks, Bruce…” Steph said quietly. She looked back at Bucky, who hadn’t moved off the table yet. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. “It didn’t hurt.”

“That’s not what I…” she started to say, but then bit her lip in hesitation.

He shrugged one shoulder, the right one, she noticed. “I already knew my head was fucked up. This isn’t exactly a surprise for me.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but instead said, “I’m sorry, Bucky…”

He looked at her for a moment. “It’s not your fault. Okay? It’s not your fault.”

She nodded, but she wasn’t sure she believed him or not.

Bruce cleared his throat when they were done. “I’ll take a closer look at the scan tonight, see if I can find where exactly the problem is. But Tony will be better with the mechanical issues. In the mean time,” he looked between the two of them, “I would suggest taking it easy with the sparring or… anything along those lines.”

Steph turned red. Great, apparently now this was common knowledge.

So they did end up having to stay the night. When Bruce had said Tony had rooms for each of them, he wasn’t kidding. She thought it would be basic, a bed, maybe a bathroom. But no, there were clothes and toiletries too, and anything else Steph could think that they would need. So she didn’t feel quite so bad about not bringing anything for staying overnight. While Jarvis offered Bucky his own room, he refused and slept with Steph like he always did.

She woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t immediately figure out why. Bucky was still asleep next to her, which was unusual in and of itself, so that hadn’t been what had woken her. She carefully got out of bed, trying not to disturb him. While she normally only wore a long night shirt, here she wore sweat pants too, just in case. She decided she might as well get a glass of water if she was awake, so she silently padded out of the room and into the common area.

But someone was already there. It was clearly the middle of the night, so she didn’t know why anyone else would be awake, and the only light on was coming from a dull blue nightlight plugged in next to the coffee maker.

However, when Steph got closer, she could see it was just Tony, leaning against the counter next to the coffee maker, which had a half-pot of fresh coffee still in it. He was slowly sipping coffee from a mug with his eyes closed.

“Finally done being drunk?” Steph asked as she approached.

Tony winced, but didn’t seem surprised to see her. He lowered the mug and looked at her. “Not so loud, Cap…”

Steph cocked one eyebrow and crossed her arms as she came to stand in front of him in the kitchenette.

He groaned and went back to his coffee mug. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m hung over.”

“I can tell,” she said quietly, not intentionally wanting to make his headache worse.

He glanced at her over the rim of his mug. “So is this the part where I get a lecture from Captain America?”

“No, no lecture,” she said and uncrossed her arms so she could lean against the island across from him.

“Please don’t say you’re disappointed in me, cause I’ve heard that enough in my life too.” He sipped his coffee and watched her.

“I wasn’t going to say that either…” She grabbed a glass from the cabinet and busied herself getting water from the tap.

“I’m sorry, Steph,” she heard from behind her. “I was a jerk.”

She turned again and leaned against the island. “No, well, yes… But…” She shook her head. “ _I’m_ sorry. I was so focused on Bucky, on helping him with that… that arm, that I didn’t even think it might be hard for you to help the person who… who killed your parents.”

“Neither did I,” he admitted and turned to refill his mug. “But then I remembered what I’d read when Natasha dumped those Hydra and SHIELD files on the internet, about the Winter Soldier’s missions. About the people that got in Hydra’s way, my dad included. How my mom was collateral damage.” He sipped his coffee again, just drinking the black liquid straight. “Then I had one drink. And one drink turned to ten. And then it was morning.” He winced again before meeting her eyes.

“I get it,” she said quietly. “If I suddenly found out that my parents’ deaths weren’t an accident, and then had to meet the person who pulled the trigger…” She shook her head.

“And, well, the way he looks. I’d seen old pictures of Barnes from the war. And I’d seen security camera footage from your fights, but it was pretty bad quality. When I saw him yesterday, he didn’t look anything like the pictures of your friend, he looks like a killer, like an assassin. So I kind of… snapped.”

Steph sighed. “I know…”

He watched her. “So how close was I to being dead if I didn’t get out of there when I did?”

“No, he wasn’t going to…” She sighed. “He agrees. He blames himself. I know it’s hard for you, suddenly having this knowledge, and I’m not trying to undermine that. But imagine what it’s like for him. To remember who he’d been, in part, at least. Then to find out he’d killed someone he’d worked with, who he had been friends with.” She looked down into her water glass. “The things they did to him, Tony… The things they _made_ him do… It’s unbelievable.” The glass cracked and she realized she was gripping it too tightly and quickly set it on the countertop of the island.

He looked at her for a moment and then went back to drinking his coffee. “You know, seeing Captain America totally head over heels in love is a little weird.”

She smiled lightly at the comment. “As long as you’ve known me, I’ve been in love. I was just grieving before. I never stopped loving him, though.”

“Aww, that’s cute, Cap. You could practically be a fairy tale, except for all the death and destruction, torture and violence.”

Steph rolled her eyes at his mocking tone of voice. “Yes, thank you for that.” She crossed her arms again, but this time it was less of a strong stance and felt more like she was trying to hold her body together.

“Hangover should be gone in the morning,” Tony said, without meeting her eyes. “I’ll take a look at your homicidal boyfriend’s arm then.”

Steph huffed out a sigh, but smiled. “Thanks. Bruce did some scans earlier. He thinks he can help figure out the source of the pain.” She looked out the dark windows. Despite the late hour, there were still lights visible along the skyline. It was the city that never slept, she thought wryly.

“Yeah, Bruce told me.”

She looked back at him. “He did?”

“Well, it was more like he came to yell at me for acting immature, and left copies of the scans and told me to get my shit together.” Tony smirked lightly over the rim of his mug.

Steph raised an eyebrow. “Bruce told you to get your shit together?”

“I’m paraphrasing.”

“Ah.” Steph relaxed against the counter behind her and dropped her palms down to the edge of it. She looked at the floor for a moment. “So you looked at them?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “Who does that to another person, another human being? I mean, I know Hydra is awful, the worst. And I saw what they did in the war. I saw what they did to _Bucky_ in the war. They tortured him, for Christ’s sake. But that… Scarring someone’s brain, taking their memories, making them into a weapon. What kind of sick, soulless bastard comes up with an idea like that?”

“Humans really do make the worst monsters,” Tony said calmly, and then she could hear him sipping from his coffee mug.

“I am going to find them all and destroy them. I really will.”

“I know you will, Cap.” He wasn’t being patronizing. She looked up and met his eyes. “Anyone with eyes can see that’s exactly what you’re going to do. And you know you’ve got our support, if you ever need it.”

Steph nodded and then smiled tiredly. “Yeah, I know.” She tried to stifle the yawn that suddenly crept up her throat. “Night, Tony. I’ll see you in the morning.” She waved and turned to head back to her room.

Bucky was still in bed when she got back, but she could tell he was awake, even though he wasn’t moving. She climbed into bed behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist before kissing the back of his neck.

“You were talking to Stark,” he said. His voice wasn’t particularly loud, but he didn’t whisper either.

“Yes,” she said and turned her face into his shoulder, his right shoulder, since he was laying on his left side.

“About me.” It wasn’t a question.

So he had heard, or perhaps he had snuck out to listen, but just didn’t want Tony to know he was there. “Yes,” she said again. They were silent for a moment, and then she said, “It wasn’t your fault, you know. And I’m going to keep telling you that until you believe me.”

“I’m sure.”

When he didn’t say anything else, she said, “Tony will actually look at the arm tomorrow. Hopefully he and Bruce can figure out what’s wrong.”

“I’m brain-damaged. That’s what’s wrong. You saw it yourself.”

“You’re not damaged.” She leaned up and pushed his shoulder down hard so he would look at her. “You have scars. But everyone has scars. I’ve never thought of you as damaged.”

He looked at her. His eyes looked black in the darkness of the room. It was a shock to realize she couldn’t remember if they always looked like this when it was this dark, or if they had still looked blue.

“And you heard Bruce. You’re healing. You’ve already remembered so much on your own.” She met his eyes, and now that she was adjusting to the darkness again, she could make out hints of blue-grey. “You don’t have to be controlled by what Hydra did to you.”

“It’s always shocking how you manage to be so hopeful,” he said dryly. But then the corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile.

Steph smiled in response. “Someone has to be.” She leaned down and kissed him softly. “I love you,” she said quietly. “Just remember that, no matter what, I love you.”

“I know…” he said slowly and reached up to trace the fingers of his right hand through her messy hair. “I love you too…”

“Good,” she said firmly. “We’ll fix this. I promise… Cause as long as we have each other, we can take on the world, right?”

His smile turned into his old smirk. “Just a couple of punks from Brooklyn against the world?”

She settled back down by his side and wrapped her arms around him. “I would say we did pretty well in all that. Except for the whole dying in the war thing. But since neither of us actually died, I don’t think that counts.”

She felt his lips against her forehead. “Still taking on the world even now.”

“Still alive, so that’s a victory,” she said with a yawn. “Get some sleep. Hopefully no drunken spats tomorrow…” If he said anything after that, she didn’t hear it, because she drifted off to sleep herself.

Bruce and Tony were already in the workshop by the time Steph and Bucky joined them the next morning. The way Bruce watched Tony with his arms crossed made her think he was there to keep Tony on his best behavior. But he didn’t try a repeat of the previous day’s performance.

“Okay, time to actually look at that arm.” He rubbed his hands together eagerly and pointed Bucky to a table. He offered no apology for his drunken outburst. But then again, maybe he wasn’t really sorry about what he’d said to Bucky, even though he’d apologized to her. Steph assumed that meant he probably still blamed Bucky, at least on some level, for Howard’s death.

Bucky wordlessly sat on the table and removed his shirt. He hardly moved as Tony first scanned the arm, then poked and prodded at it, and then finally went at it with some kind of electric pentool. Now Steph could tell the scar tissue around the metal shoulder joint was very inflamed. But Bucky didn’t wince once, or show any other indication of pain, as Tony moved the arm around. She wasn’t sure what it meant that he dropped his guard enough around her that she had been able to tell he was in pain the other day. However, it was clear he was completely on guard around Bruce and Tony, especially when he was vulnerable like this.

So Steph stayed close, just in case. She watched what Tony did, and tried not to hover. After a few minutes, it seemed like Tony completely forgot he was working on something attached to a living person, and not another one of his machines.

Where the MRI had taken a few minutes, Tony spent hours just examining the arm, and removing various pieces before replacing them. He would occasionally hum to himself or mutter something about the design. Once she caught, “Now _that_ doesn’t make any sense. God damn Nazis…”

After two and a half hours of this, with no break, Steph met Bucky’s eye and asked quietly, “Doing okay?”

He nodded once, a quick jerk of his head, but he didn’t say anything. Tony glanced up at the motion. “This is an interesting piece of tech you have welded to your skin, here,” he said in that deadpan voice he used that seemed to annoy everyone.

Bucky scowled, but still didn’t say anything.

“Though, I suppose that wasn’t your choice.” Tony finally straightened up and turned off his various electric devices.

Steph looked at him expectantly, so he met her gaze, rather than direct his prognosis to Bucky. “Wiring’s gone bad. It was probably damaged in some fight and never repaired, from what I can tell. Also, it was never designed for comfort. The whole thing is designed for maximum destruction. It weighs maybe twelve pounds more than it reasonably should.” Tony let out an exhale. “But based on when it must have been created, it was incredibly advanced for its time. Very few upgrades were ever done.”

Bucky was watching him as he spoke, but Tony continued to ignore him and talk to Steph. Steph glanced up at Bucky’s face. “I guess that makes sense…” She looked back at Tony. “So can you fix the, um, wiring problem?”

Tony twirled the tool between his fingers and smirked. “I _could_ ,” he said slowly. “But like I said, the starting place was wrong. If I build from scratch, I can make an arm that’s more flexible, lighter, more durable, and won’t randomly send shocks into the brain.” To elaborate his point, he zapped the arm in between two of the joints with his tool. Steph had a flashback to when he’d done that to Bruce on the helicarrier and she had yelled at him. It seemed Tony never learned.

Bucky didn’t lash out at Tony. His eye twitched slightly, so Steph knew whatever Tony had done had just caused him a lot of pain. But he only glared at Tony. “Don’t do that again,” was the first thing he said all day.

Tony held up his hands in a placating gesture, but he was still smiling. “Hydra designed a functional, but bad arm. Just demonstrating.” His expression turned serious suddenly. “‘Course, if I make a new arm, I’ll need to remove this one completely. Might even have to strip it down to the baseplate. That’s not going to be pretty. And it’s not going to be pleasant.” He looked directly at Bucky’s face. “So it’s your choice. Like I said, I can fix the wiring, but it’ll only cause problems again later down the line.”

Bucky gazed steadily at him, and seemed to actually be contemplating the decision. Tony’s eyes flickered to Steph, and then he said to Bucky, “Chances are pretty high that when the arm gives out again, it’ll be during a fight. Which could be fatal, for someone.”

Bucky’s eyes flickered to her as well, and she opened her mouth to protest to their insinuations, that if Bucky’s arm broke down in battle, he wouldn’t be able to protect her. She was fully capable of taking care of herself. But before she could say anything, Bucky said, “Do it, then. Replace the arm.”

“Great! This’ll be fun.” Tony smirked widely.

Steph sighed. “So how long is that going to take? You may have to fix the wiring anyway.”

Tony held up three fingers. “I can get it done in three days, no sweat.”

Steph blinked in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Tony waved his hand dismissively, and then turned towards a display table. “Jarvis, pull up the scan of the current arm.” A blue hologram of Bucky’s arm appeared over the table. Tony spread his hands apart and the various pieces flew away from each other by a few inches, so he could see around every unit. “Just hang out at the Tower for three days. There’s plenty to do here.” He glanced at them. “Or go see the city and do the tourist thing. You’re in New York, after all.”

“Tony, we grew up in New York.”

“You grew up in New York seventy years ago. A lot’s changed. I bet you never even saw anything while you were living here two years ago.”

Steph opened her mouth, but then closed it. Because it was true, she had pointedly wandered no further than Manhattan, and spent most of her time researching about the end of the war, and generally refusing to accept she had lost sixty-eight years. She looked at Bucky and shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t suppose you’ve been back to Brooklyn since…”

He shook his head. “No missions took me to Brooklyn. A few in Manhattan. One in Harlem. And one on Long Island.”

“Do you… want to visit Brooklyn?” she asked slowly.

He watched her for a moment. He normally had a blank, or hard-to-read expression on his face. But this time, she could tell intense emotions were playing out beneath the surface. “Okay,” he said quietly. He grabbed his shirt and pulled it on, and then he slipped down off the table.

“Let us know if you need anything…” Steph said to Tony. He waved them off without looking at them.

Bruce looked up from the book he had been reading the past couple hours while Tony obsessed about the tech. “I’ll stay here, and keep an eye on him.” He nodded towards Tony, who was now completely ignoring them.

Steph hesitated, and then said, “Make sure he eats. And _doesn’t_ drink.”

Bruce smiled lightly. “I think he’s having too much fun with his new project.”

“We’ll be back later,” she said and then lead Bucky out of the workshop. “I wonder how much things have changed…” she said half to herself, but she glanced at Bucky as she said it.

“More or less than us?” He smiled wryly. “Maybe it will look the same. And we will be the different ones.”

“Maybe…”

So they went to Brooklyn and tracked down their old haunts. Both her old apartment building and his were gone, but there were other buildings from their youth still standing. They were updated and had completely new interiors, with offices, or apartments, or shops  where there had been other things before. But the outsides were the same

It was the opposite of them, Steph realized. At least, she hoped for the most part they were the same inside, even if they looked completely different from the two kids who grew up here eighty years ago.

Steph looped her index finger around Bucky’s right hand as they walked through their old neighborhood. He glanced down at their hands, and then fully took her hand in his. After all, it wasn’t like they had to hide that they were together. She squeezed his hand and smiled at him. On a quieter street, he pulled her into a deserted side-alley and kissed her breathless. When he finally pulled back, he whispered against her lips, “For old time’s sake.”

She laughed. “That was London. I only wish we’d done that here. But we were both too stupid to see what was right in front of our faces.”

He nipped her ear. “Only in retrospect was it obvious. It was really hard to tell what the hell you wanted romantically back then.”

“That’s because I wanted _you_ , idiot.” She tilted her head slightly as his lips ghosted along her neck. “And you spent all your time being with every single other girl in Brooklyn.”

“Not _every_ other girl in Brooklyn. I think I missed a few.” His hands on her hips pressed her fully back against the brick wall she leaned against.

“The ones who were too smart to fall for your charm.” She closed her eyes and threaded her fingers through his long hair. “But me, I fell for the punk, not the charmer.”

He kissed along her jaw. “So if we have to stay in Stark Tower for three days, does that mean no sex for three days?”

Steph nearly choked at the blunt way he put that. She looked at him in surprise, and saw him smirking at her. “Yes,” she hissed. “I do not want to have sex with Tony and Bruce right next door!”

“Hm, too bad…” He went back to sucking on her earlobe. If he kept up what he was doing much longer, it was going to make her weak in the knees, and she knew she’d be regretting the proclamation she just made.

So she finally pushed him back and shook her head. “You are such a bad man.” She blinked when she realized she had echoed herself.

He smiled at her. “Would you like me any other way?”

She looked at him. “Bucky…” Suddenly, it was like they were back in that alley in London, after leaving the bar. She could practically see him with shorter hair and his Sergeant’s coat. Oh the times, how they had changed. “Come on…” She moved herself away from the wall, and took his hand to lead him out of the alley. “How’s your arm?” she asked after a moment.

“It’s fine,” he said levelly. The Brooklyn boy was gone. He was back to the post-Winter Soldier Bucky. She knew that was her fault. But memories could be too much for her too.

“Liar,” she said softly.

He sighed. “Okay. It aches, but it’s not that bad. I think Stark fixed some things while he was poking around.”

Steph nodded. “You tell me if it starts hurting. Just because you can take the pain, doesn’t mean you have too.”

He looked at her. “Okay…”

The sun had set completely by the time they made their way back to Stark Tower. Tony was still working on the new arm by the time they went to bed, and was still working when they got up. Steph had a feeling he hadn’t slept, because that was something he did. They spent the next day using the training facilities in the Tower, trying out the various settings and equipment.

That night, Bucky had a flashback.

As soon as Steph realized what was going on, her first thought was, _Oh no, not here!_ He started thrashing before coming to the semi-consciousness that meant he would probably attack. Rather than wait to see what he did, she immediately straddled his waist and pinned his arms under her knees to hold him down. Counter to that, she whispered soothingly that he was in a safe place.

She prayed he didn’t have a knife hidden under his pillow, otherwise she might be in serious trouble if he could get an arm free. He didn’t actually get an arm free. The thrashing settled down, until he was lying still and breathing heavily, with clenched teeth. He opened and closed his metal hand several times, but he didn’t try to free it.

“Bucky…” she whispered. “You’re okay. You’re safe. Come on, wake up.”

He seemed to finally see her, and slowly his breathing calmed down. He blinked a few times, and really looked at her. He noticed her position and then let out a long, low sigh.

“I had another flashback…” he said quietly.

She nodded and eased her knees off his arms and slid off him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It was the usual…” He rubbed his right arm, and then rotated the metal one. He frowned as he did it, like he wasn’t satisfied with its movement.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked. “Or is it your arm?”

“It’s okay…” he said slowly. He dropped the metal arm to his side and rubbed his right hand across his face and into his hair, looking up at the ceiling. “Thanks for stopping me before I tried to leave the room, or something…”

“Yeah…” She continued to look down at him. “Do you know what triggered this one?”

He shrugged and kept his arm over his eyes. “Could’ve been anything with all the stuff that’s happened over the last couple days.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“Don’t you apologize. It’s not your fault I’m fucked up.”

“Bucky,” she said sternly. She gently pushed his arm aside so she could look into his eyes.

He sighed, but then smiled tiredly at her. “Yeah, yeah. Okay.”

She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Do you think you’ll be able to get back to sleep?”

He nodded stiffly. “Besides, Stark is supposed to have the new arm finished tomorrow.” He held up his left hand and looked at it. “And it will be good riddance to this thing.”

She settled back down in the bed beside him. “But you heard Tony. That’s only after what could be painful surgery.”

“It will be worth it,” he said viciously, while he continued to look at his hand. “Then I won’t have Hydra’s mark on me anymore.”

“Yeah…” She reached up and laced her fingers through his metal ones. “But I don’t think Hydra really owns this anymore. You took repossession of it.”

He turned his head and looked at her. “It will still be good to be rid of it.”

She nodded. “Get back to sleep…” She wasn’t sure if he listened to her as she drifted off again.

Steph wasn’t allowed in the room. She tried to insist. She was convinced she had to be in the same room as Bucky, or he might lose it. But he just looked at her and nodded. So even in front of Tony and Bruce, she took his face in her hands and kissed him softly. Tony gave her an amused expression as she left. That was when she realized that was the first time they had kissed in front of anyone else.

She spent the rest of the day full of restless energy. She sat on the couch, she got up. She tried reading. She got up. She tried training. She couldn’t concentrate. She even wandered down to the streets of Manhattan to get out of the oppressive atmosphere of the Tower. But she rushed back after only twenty minutes, because she wanted to be there when they were done. Which turned out to be ridiculous, because she just ended up sitting around for several hours more.

The sun had completely set by the time Bruce walked out to find her sitting on the couch with her knees draw up to her chest and her head lying on top of her knees. She immediately jumped up when she noticed him. “That took a long time. Was it supposed to take that long?”

He held up his hands. “Everything is fine. Tony decided to completely strip away every trace of Hydra’s arm. And it was…” He trailed off and looked at her face. “Well, it was a good thing he did. Because it would have needed to be reset eventually anyway.

“And?” Steph asked expectantly.

“We got the new plates on, and Tony is setting up the wiring of the new arm. He should be done soon.” Bruce smiled lightly and squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Steph. Barnes is fine.”

Steph let out a long breath. “When will Tony be done? Can I see Bucky?”

“Yeah, sure, go for it,” Tony said as he walked out of the workshop. He was covered in grease, and was currently trying to wipe it off his hands. “Make sure he doesn’t move. I’m going to go take a shower.” Tony walked through the room and headed for the residential section of the Tower.

Steph smiled at Bruce, and then moved past him and into the workshop. Bucky was lying on a makeshift hospital bed, with his left arm propped on a table. He turned his head to look at her as she walked in. “Hi…” he said slowly. His gaze was slightly unfocused, so they had probably anesthetized him, at least a bit. It wouldn’t work so well on him because of the serum.

She came around him and noticed that the joint where the new metal met his skin was wrapped in bandages. She gently slid her fingers into his right ones and squeezed his hand. “Hey… How are you feeling?”

“A little out of it. I told them I could handle the pain, but they kept trying to knock me out. Never really worked.”

Steph nodded. She sat down by the bed. “Tony says you’re not supposed to move for a bit.”

Bucky nodded. “How’s the arm look?”

She leaned over him and looked at it again. It wasn’t painted red and gold, thankfully. If Steph was being honest, she may have been slightly worried Tony would do something like that. Or paint it red white and blue. Fortunately, it was a gleaming chrome. It looked pretty similar in style to the original arm, but she could tell it was designed differently. The most striking difference, however, was the lack of a red star on the shoulder. She’d gotten so used to it, that she was surprised it was gone.

“It doesn’t look like Hydra created it.” She met his eyes and saw satisfaction there. She leaned forward and gently brushed his hair out of his face. “But you’ll have to see how well it performs after you recover.”

He nodded. “Still. Progress.”

Steph sat on the ground in the training room as she watched Bucky run through various exercises to test out his new arm. It was strange to see him moving with the gleaming new chrome-plated arm. The more she saw it, the less she got used to it. The arm had been the first thing she had really seen of Bucky, even before she knew it was him, after decades of separation.

Replacing the arm had really messed with his nerves. So he practically had to relearn how to use the cybernetic arm. True to his word, Tony had made it lighter and more flexible than Hydra’s version. So the first punch Bucky tried to throw went too far, and thus had less strength in it. Steph could tell Bucky was frustrated that he had to readjust. At some point, he had found a piece of string or cord or something and had tied his hair out of the way as he repeated the exercises Tony had suggested.

Steph had never seen Bucky with his hair back. She didn’t even know it ever bothered him. That was specifically the reason she had always kept hers short, so it wouldn’t get in her way. When she became Captain America, rather than go for a more girlish hair style, it made even more sense to her to keep her hair short, even if she wasn’t doing real fighting yet.

Steph crossed her arms over her knees, which were drawn up to her chest, and rested her chin on them. Her eyes watched Bucky move across the room. His style was very different from hers. She had learned from SHIELD. Occasionally Nat would show her a thing or two, but most of Nat’s moves relied on the opponent being both bigger and stronger. Steph didn’t have that problem, not anymore.

Bucky had learned from Hydra, from programming and conditioning. He relied on his weapons, specifically knives, much more, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t deadly bare-handed. She knew that first-hand. He also relied on his arm heavily, with its strength that was superior even to their super-soldier-serum-enhanced bodies.

Finally, Bucky stopped to take a break. Steph pushed herself to her feet as he walked over and offered him a water bottle. He took it gratefully. “So how does it feel?” she asked.

He drained the water bottle and looked at her. “Stark was right. It’s more flexible.” He rotated his arm. The swelling around the shoulder plate had almost entirely gone down. The scars were still there, but they were no longer an inflamed red. “And lighter. I was so used to how heavy the arm was, that I never realized my arms were unbalanced.” He looked at her. “It is going to take some getting used to.”

“That’s understandable. So, ready to head back to DC?”

“I’m ready to go on the full offensive against Hydra.” He clenched his metal fist. “I’m going to track them down, every last one.”

“I know,” Steph said. “Me too. We’ll get them.”

He looked at her and seemed to consider something. He set the empty water bottle down. “Want to go a round?”

“You’re still recovering,” she said quickly. “I wouldn’t want to…”

“Captain America doesn’t think she can do it?” He smirked lightly and moved back towards the center of the training room.

Steph shucked off her jacket and strode across the room. “Fine, then. Let’s see what you’ve got, Barnes.” She didn’t give him much of a chance to get ready. She ran right at him and jumped in the air to swing her knee at his face. But his right arm was there to block. He swiped at her with his metal hand. She thought she managed to roll out of the way, but he just barely got her. He was right. It did have more range. Soon they were in a back and forth that was almost like a dance.

They were evenly matched. But that had been obvious from the first time they had fought, back when they were actually trying to kill each other. However, Steph misjudged one step back and Bucky managed to hook his foot around her ankle, sending her falling back to the ground. Before she could recover, he had her pinned to the floor, his hands holding her wrists down above her head.

She struggled once futilely, and then went lax. “Well done, Sergeant,” she said, with just a bit of a teasing tone of voice.

“Why thank you, Captain.” He didn’t let her up from her position, even though he’d clearly won. They were both breathing hard from the match, and she was unsurprised to see his eyes seemed darker than usual. She was also unsurprised when he leaned down and kissed her none-too-softly. His grip on her wrists tightened a bit, but she pushed against it as she kissed him back, and licked her tongue along his bottom lip.

He bit down on her lower lip and then kissed the side of her mouth and along her jaw. As she tilted her head back, she couldn’t help but think how things had progressed rather fast. But that was their relationship all over. Fighting one minute, making love the next. When Bucky bit her earlobe, she tried to stifle a small moan, but was unsuccessful. If they didn’t stop soon, they would end up doing things in the training room that she was fairly certain would make Tony angry with them.

“Not exactly the exercise I had in mind.”

Steph’s eyes flew open. She hadn’t even been aware that she had closed them. Bucky leaned back onto his legs, but kept his hands on her wrists. She rolled her head sideways to see the door, since Bucky still had her pinned. Sure enough, Tony was standing there with a very amused expression on his face. “Also, guys,” he pointed up, “the training room has security cameras. So even if no one were to walk in on you, there’d be video evidence.”

Bucky sighed in exasperation and finally got off Steph. She stood awkwardly and brushed off her clothes. She couldn’t help but feel like a kid caught doing something bad. “We were sparring…”

“Oh yeah, I can tell.” Tony smirked widely. “Just move it to your bedroom, next time. Please.”

Steph covered her face with one hand to try to hide the fact that she had gone completely red. “Yeah, we’ll keep that in mind…”

Tony turned to Bucky. “So I take it the arm works to your satisfaction.”

Bucky looked at his left hand again. “Yes.” He looked back up at Tony. “Thank you.”

Tony blinked in surprise. “Yeah, sure. “ He nodded to Steph. “You’re her friend, or, you know, whatever. I’ve already said I’m here to help any of the Avengers.”

Steph rose one eyebrow. “The Avengers? Is that still a thing?”

Tony smirked. “I’m hoping so. We kind of took on an entire alien army and won. We were a good team.”

“We were a time bomb,” Steph reminded him.

“And when we exploded, Loki was the one who regretted it!”

Steph smiled and shook her head. “Okay. When it mattered, we made a good team.”

“Maybe someday you’ll be a part of it,” Tony said to Bucky.

“Maybe,” he said.

Steph glanced at him. “We’re going to head back to DC today. There isn’t anything else you need to do with the arm, right?”

“No, you’re good to go. Let me know if there are any problems. But I built it, so there shouldn’t be. It should be very hard to break, but knowing you two, you’ll find a way. Let me know when it needs repairs. I do better maintenance on my machines than Hydra.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Steph said sincerely.

“No problem, Cap.”

 

Even though Tony tried to insist once again that they take one of his private jets, they still took the train back. Altogether, they had spent much longer in New York than Steph had originally expected. She thought it was going to be a one-day trip, but they spent closer to a week there. Steph was thinking about buying new groceries, and checking in with Sam, and a bunch of other things as she unlocked the door to her apartment, but those thoughts quickly left her mind.

As soon as they walked in, Bucky hoisted her against the back of the door and kissed her until they both had to pull back for air. They stayed separated only long enough to draw breath. Ultimately, they didn’t quite make it to the bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one kind of got away from me. I started it planning to do one thing and ended up doing something completely different. Incidentally, it's the longest "Deleted Scenes" chapters, in fact, it's almost as long as the original story.
> 
> Also, medical mumbo-jumbo!


	16. And It's Beginning to Snow

The dry remains of grass crackled under Steph’s shoes. Most of it was dead, but the grass that had survived this far into the season was covered with frost. However, it was a surprisingly clear and bright day despite the cold. She leaned over and gently set down the bundle of flowers she had brought with her, and then she settled down on the grass herself.

Steph drew her knees up and rested her elbows on them as she looked at the stone in front of her. “Hey Bucky…” she said quietly. “I’m back…” She reached out and ran her fingers over the engraved name at the bottom of the list of deceased Howling Commandos. This was the only one with an epitaph, the one that marked a grave.

“It’s… uh… it’s been a while.” She adjusted the flowers at the base of the grave. “I brought flowers this time. I mean, it’s winter, so they’re not going to last that long, but they’re there.” She looked past the marble. “I saw some tourists earlier. I guess even in winter… I hope they don’t wander over here. Though maybe the appeal of visiting Captain America’s grave has gone now that everyone knows she’s alive.” Steph laughed shakily and ran her fingers through her hair. “So much for keeping that on the down low. After New York, everyone knew. They actually asked me what I wanted to do about the grave.” She smiled lightly at the stone. “I told them to just leave it since I knew your grave was here too. So that stupid statue is still there.”

Steph rested her chin on her arms. “I’m living here now, in the DC area. SHIELD headquarters and all. I’m officially a SHIELD agent now. I guess I really impressed them with that stunt in the summer. You know, helped stop an alien invasion. And they get to add a super soldier to their roster.

“I’ve been training with Natasha, learning how to fight. You know they barely trained us to do anything during the war. You should see what I can do now.” She paused and looked down at the grass. “I guess I would’ve ended up with SHIELD anyway, if I’d survived the war.” She huffed out a breath. “I mean, if I hadn’t frozen. Though it really does feel like I died and came back to life with everything that’s happened.

“I like working with Natasha. She doesn’t let anything stop her, and she can take down anyone who gets in her way. I guess she reminds me of Peggy in that way.” Steph tilted her head to lay it down sideway on her arms. “I always admired Peggy. And I admire Natasha. They’re strong without the help of super soldier serum. They won’t let men tell them what to do or stop them. I always wanted to be that way, but it felt like I was fighting against my body as well as the world.” Her eyes drifted down slightly. “Maybe that was always an excuse. Maybe I let my sicknesses get in the way of… what I wanted. So when I became Captain America, I had to try that much harder to make up for all that lost time.”

“But then I always had you. You always watched my back. Even when I was being stupid, you stood up for me. I know you were my best friend, Buck. But why did you go to all that trouble?” Her lips quirked with a long-ago smile. “I know I used to ask that, and you used to call me stupid. And I know now it was cause… well, you wanted us to be more than friends. But even before that. At the very beginning, why’d you jump in to help a dumb little girl who didn’t know any better than to stand up to bullies three times her size?” She lifted her hand and touched the engraved name. “Guess I’ll never know. Never hear your voice again…”

She pulled back her hand and physically shook herself, perhaps to shake off the sudden onslaught of melancholy. “You should see this place, though. The SHIELD DC headquarters are enough to even make Tony Stark jealous. But then again, the place was probably designed by Howard, so maybe not. I thought the Helicarrier was impressive, but this place is monumental. Quite a big step up from our wartime bunker in London. Everything is so… well, it’s not the war anymore. At least, not that one. Though in some ways, our war was simpler, more cut and dry. We knew who the enemies were back them. Everything feels much more… grey nowadays.”

Steph gazed across the lawns. “I visited Peggy the other day… She’s in a nursing home here in DC.” Steph ran her fingers through the dead grass. “I don’t know if they told her when they found me in the ice, or if it even matters if they did. When she saw me, she recognized me immediately. She just said, ‘Steph, you came back. You’re alive.’ And then we talked for hours. You would never think she was this frail old lady. She told me about her time after the war, and starting SHIELD with Howard. She got married and had kids, and grandkids. She had a full life.” Steph paused. “I went back a week or so later. And…” she ducked her head “she didn’t remember any of it. She looked at me with this look of shock and surprise and said, ‘Steph, you came back. You’re alive.’ And that’s how it is every time I go.” Steph rubbed her hand across her face. “I thought I still had a friend to talk to, but… her memory’s falling apart. It’s so sad that there are people who know her as she is now but never knew her when she was this kick-ass dame who didn’t take shit from any man.”

Steph looked at the stone again. “She’s the only one left from the war. And me, I guess.” Steph crossed her arms over her knees and rested her head on them. “I wish you were here. I miss you…” She kept her head down for a few quiet moments. The wind rustled her hair, and she could feel it dancing across her scalp. Even with her head down, she could tell it had gotten darker, even though it was still too early for the sun to be going down.

Steph lifted her head just enough so she could see the stone again. “Do you know what day it is?” She reached out and touched the petals of one of the lilies in the bouquet she had brought. The flowers already looked a little worse for wear. “It was today, sixty-eight years ago, that I lost you… Everyone remembers the day that Captain America went down, but no one remembers this date. I suppose it’s only important to me. So I thought I’d come here. I wanted to leave some sign that your life mattered to me. You mattered to me. Everyone else can honor and remember Captain America. But I remember you. Bucky Barnes. My best friend.

“I’m not usually mopey like this. I’m actually trying. But it’s a lot to catch up on and take in. Still. I know you’d be mad at me if I tried to keep living in the past. So I’m trying to accept this strange future I live in now. In some ways, it’s not so bad. I’ve actually gotten used to the whole cell phone thing.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the slim piece of plastic and glass, and held it up like she was showing someone. “Even the part where people carry around telephones in their pockets, but rarely actually talk on them. Marvels of the future, I guess.” She slipped her phone back into her pocket. “So I’m okay. I’ll… I’ll be fine…” She set her chin on her arms again. “But I still miss you.”

Something fluttered down directly in front of her face, making her go cross-eyed as she tried to follow it. Steph sat up and saw it was a snowflake. She looked up and finally noticed the clouds that had rolled over while she had been sitting there. She held out her hand, and sure enough another snowflake fell into her palm. “And it’s beginning to snow…” she said sadly.

She watched the snow melt in her palm, and then got to her feet. She brushed off her clothes, which had gotten a bit damp from the ground. Almost as an after-thought, she reached out and touched her fingers to the inscription of Bucky’s name. “Bye, Buck…”

Steph straightened her jacket one last time, and then made her way around the memorial. She pulled her collar up against the falling snow, even though it had been years since it could possibly bother her. Oh, to have those days back when the biggest thing she had to worry about was getting sick in the winter. Even then, Bucky would always be there to help her get better. But the past was gone. It was never coming back. So she walked into the future where snow didn’t bother her, but it left her all alone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally didn't spend the last week re-watching and listening to RENT. Noooooo. Also, kudos to anyone who got that it was a RENT reference before reading this. I like "and it's beginning to snow" as a metaphor for life sucks, and then another awful thing happens. Isn't that always the way, after all?


	17. I Bet My Life on You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of the line.

He was confused. For the first time ever, the Winter Soldier was confused about his mission. It wasn’t a complicated mission or one that would require planning. It was a very straight-forward mission: kill Captain America. But still, he was confused.

Something about this mission felt… wrong to him. Which was bizarre in and of itself. He had never thought of his missions as “right” or “wrong” before. They simply were. He either completed them or he failed. And he had never failed a mission. So he couldn’t start now. He had to put aside whatever nagging feeling tried to creep into his mind and focus only on killing Captain America.

Captain America had her own mission, though. He knew that. He knew she was trying to stop the launch of the Insight Helicarriers. The reason for his mission was to prevent her from doing that, but he was not tasked with making sure Project Insight succeeded. That would simply be a byproduct of his mission. He was assigned to kill Captain America regardless of whether her plan succeeded or not. He was a killer. That was what he did best. So he would leave the workings of Hydra to others in the organization. He was going after Captain America.

Getting rid of her “sidekick” was simple enough, though he doubted the man was dead. Captain America, herself, managed to get back onto the Helicarrier after being kicked off by the Winter Soldier. He watched her scramble back up. Rather than attack her again outside, he went in. If she was going to try to stop Project Insight, then she would need to get to the central CPU in the fishbowl of the Helicarrier. The Winter Soldier stood in front of it to block her way.

She came running through the door and out onto the catwalk, but she slowed to a stop halfway down when she saw him. Even with half her face covered by her helmet, he could see the anguish in her expression. “People are gonna die, Buck,” she said in a soft voice. She still wore her heart on her sleeve. (Still?) “Innocent people.” She paused to see his reaction, but his expression didn’t change. He looked at her coldly. “I can’t let that happen,” she said firmly. By the way she shifted her arm, he could tell she was tightening her grip on her shield. “Please don’t make me do this,” she said a bit desperately. When he still didn’t react, her expression hardened, and she launched into the attack herself by throwing her shield at him.

And then there was only the fight. Pure instinct took over and he moved around her and shot for her unguarded weak spots. But she was relentless, perhaps as committed to completing her mission as he was his, if not more so. They were almost evenly matched. He had discovered that when they fought before. (They fought before? When?) Since her goal was the computer chip, he determined he had to keep it away from her. But keeping the computer chip out of her hands was only a vague notion. His goal was to kill her. And she was more determined to get that computer chip back.

It seemed whatever hesitation she had earlier about fighting him was gone. Because she did not hesitate at all as she pinned him and snapped his flesh arm out of its socket. It pulled a yell out of him as he felt the muscles and tendons tear. With only one functional arm, he couldn’t get her off. She had him pinned in a chokehold and his brain was quickly running out of oxygen.

As his vision started to black out along the edges, the confusion came back. That feeling that what he was doing, his mission, the thing most important in his life, was somehow completely opposite of what he should be doing. Did he hold back while fighting because of this feeling?

He blacked out.

When he came to, Captain America was already half-way up the central unit. She would complete her mission and he would fail. His sense of purpose realigned at that thought. He pulled out his last handgun and managed to graze her thigh, but that didn’t stop her. She crawled onto the catwalk before he had a chance to shoot again.

The pain in his right shoulder lashed down his arm and up towards his neck, which made it harder to focus, but not impossible. He took a few steps sideways and just managed to get her in sight as he heard her say, “Stand by.” Before she could complete her next statement, he took the shot. Not for her head, but right in the abdomen. She fell.

He faltered against one of the metal beams on the floor. She wasn’t dead. His mission wasn’t done yet. He could hear her labored breaths from above him. But she had fallen out of his line of sight, so he couldn’t make the killing shot. His arm seared with pain, along with the other injuries she had given him. After all, he hadn’t completely healed from their last fight. (Their last fight?) Yes, they fought on the causeway. And then they put him in the machine. (But why? It was the same mission.) Because he thought he knew…

Mission: kill Captain America.

The only thing that mattered was the mission.

“Charlie lock…” he heard her mutter from above him, followed by “Do it! Do it now!”

He barely had a chance to register the fact that she had completed her mission before fire was raining down on them from the other two Helicarriers. The beam he was next to became disconnected. He just managed to avoid getting crushed completely, but still got his leg trapped underneath the beam. The pain shot up his leg and he cried out.

With one arm out of commission, and the left arm damaged from everything Captain America had done, there was no way he could free himself. Or complete his mission. He had failed. A clank to his right made him turn his head. It was the sound of Captain America dropping down onto the debris beside him. He looked at her and then tried once again to futilely lift the metal beam off his legs.

She clutched her stomach as she stumbled her way over to him. She was bleeding profusely, and if she didn’t take care of her gunshot wound, she would bleed out. (Which was what he wanted, right?) For a moment, he thought she was going to try to finish him off, but instead she leaned down and used all her remaining strength to raise the metal beam just enough for him to drag himself out. He didn’t question it, but pulled himself out from under the debris with his metal arm. She let it drop with a clang that echoed through the remains of the glass fishbowl.

Both struggled to catch their breath, both wounded. He leaned on his good knee and looked over at her. She was only a few feet away. “You know me,” she said with as much passion as her voice would allow.

_But I knew her._

There was a table, a brightly lit room. A leering face: beady eyes behind round glasses and _“You are to be the new face of Hydra.”_ There was a different table, a darker room. The same leering face. And muttering. Someone was muttering. The words seemed familiar, but he couldn’t understand them. He realized they were coming out his own mouth. And then there was a different face. A face he knew well, but was completely new. Like a burst of sunlight, like a breath of air, pulling him back from the abyss, and _“Bucky!”_

“No I don’t!” he screamed as he lashed out to erase the images trying to cloud his brain. It was sloppy punch, but it connected, and it had all the power of his cybernetic arm. It sent her sprawling across the glass.

She steadied herself and shakily got back to her feet. She could barely stand. _He_ could barely stand, shaking with his effort to repress emotions and memories (memories?). There was the train. There was _always_ the train. And the fall. He dreamed of the fall. It was the only dream he could consistently remember. Only this time there was that face again. Blue eyes shining. Blonde hair whipping around in the wind. And a scream that wasn’t his scream,  _“BUCKY!!! No!!!!”_

“Bucky, you’ve known me your whole life.” She tried to stay standing as the whole Helicarrier shook again.

He hit her again. This time it took her longer to get back to her feet, but get back to her feet she did. As she stood again, she said slowly, “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

Rage boiled through him. He had never felt rage or anger about a mission. He had never felt anything about a mission. All he had ever wanted was to complete the mission, and nothing else. He couldn’t remember wanting anything else. He couldn’t even remember the feeling of want. Want was the wrong word for his missions. He didn’t want to complete his missions, he needed to. Because without the mission, what was there? A target had never made him feel this kind of rage, this kind of desperation, as Captain America.

“Shut up!!” he screamed as he threw his entire body weight into punching her again.

When she rose (because she never did know when to stay down), she tore the helmet off her head and tossed it aside. She couldn’t catch her breath at all, and the wound on her stomach was clearly bleeding again. But she still didn’t stop. “I’m not going to fight you…” she said weakly as she dropped her shield. It fell through the broken floor of the Helicarrier into the Potomac below.

When she straightened up, he could see it was the same face that had leaned over him on that table and that had watched him fall. It was always the same face. The woman he _knew_ on the causeway. And somewhere, far, far back, a slightly skinnier face, but still the same, looking up at him defiantly.

“You’re my best friend…”

He screamed and attacked her, knocking her to the floor. Here it was, right here, the end of his mission in sight. All he had to do was eliminate Captain America. If he killed Captain America, these things crowding into his brain would disappear. “You’re my mission,” he said in response. Without pausing, he start pounding her face with his metal fist. He didn’t even realize he was punctuating each hit with “You’re! My! Mission!”

Out of breath, he lifted his arm once more to deliver what would surely be the final blow. Her gaze was unfocused. Her lips were split. Her eyes were black. And her cheekbone was definitely fractured. No normal person should have been able to breathe, let alone speak. But she still muttered, “Then finish it… Cause I’m with you… ‘til the end of the line.”

Something inside him snapped. He saw the split lip and the black eye on the face below him, and at the same time he saw a split lip and a black eye on a different face—but the same face. She was young and small and skinny and she smiled up at him despite the injuries and said _“Bucky.”_

She never did know when to stay down. No matter the injuries or the bullies she was facing, she would get back up, defiant. Weak, but strong. He saw dozens and hundreds of versions of the skinny girl standing up to different bullies. They passed through his mind like a reel of film. And in each one, he came running. Always. And there was always that face after. She would look up at him with relief. The skinny girl who should be Captain America, but wasn’t, would look at him like an ally.

Just like that, it was gone. The mission. All the kill missions. He felt wiped, but not like when he came out of the machine. He _knew_ her. His mission was to kill Captain America, but he felt no compulsion to follow it anymore. It had been replaced.

That confusion, that nagging feeling at the back of his mind had finally surfaced. It was another mission, a conflicting mission. But it was much older. This mission predated any other mission he had been given. And that mission was to protect Steph Rogers.

His mission had always been to protect Steph Rogers. It had been buried and attacked and wiped, but never truly left him. And now that it had surfaced again, it would not disappear. Even if he tried to dig for his Hydra-assigned mission, it wouldn’t come.

Protect Steph. Always.

All of that happened in the blink of an eye. The emotions that went through him, the epiphany, everything changed, but he was still looking down at her beaten and bloody face with his left arm raised.

Before he could do anything, however, the Helicarrier fell apart. The central unit toppled and tore the floor right out from underneath them. On instinct, he grabbed a metal beam with his left hand to save himself, but Captain America— _Steph_ —plummeted to the river below.

She was already halfway to unconsciousness and would surely drown, thus completing his mission for Hydra: eliminate Captain America. But no, that wasn’t his mission anymore. His mission was to save Steph. Before his mind had completely come to that conclusion, he let go of the metal beam and angled his body so he could dive into the water.

His left arm immediately started to drag him down, but his legs were strong enough to propel him through the water. Even in the dark, murky depths littered with falling debris, he could make out the red, white, and blue uniform below him. He pushed towards that and grabbed a strap of her uniform with his metal hand.

They were heavy, both weighed down by waterlogged combat uniforms. She was dead weight and he couldn’t use his other arm. But his mission, his primordial mission, propelled him. They surfaced near the shore opposite SHIELD headquarters. He dragged her up onto the beach and leaned over to make sure he had saved her in time. For a moment, she was completely still, and then she coughed and water drizzled out of her mouth, though she was still unconscious. But she was breathing. She would make it through this, after all she had survived worse than this.

He straightened up. She had?

She was thin, so thin, and sick. She curled into herself, trying to keep off the chill. No matter how many blankets she had, it never seemed like enough. She couldn’t get warm. So he crawled into the bed behind her and wrapped her in his arms.

_“Idiot…”_ the ghost of her voice whispered. _“You’ll get sick too…”_

_“I’ll be okay… With you ‘til the end of the line, remember?”_

Protect Steph.

She leaned over him, and couldn’t possibly be here. This was the last place he wanted her to be. He had to be dead, if he was imagining her face. He especially had to be hallucinating when she leaned down and touched her lips softly to his. His reality settled back into place when she started to tear the straps holding him to the table. She was really here. And she was so different. But it was still her. And he still had the same mission.

Bucky stood up completely and clutched his dislocated arm to his stomach. Now that the adrenaline of the memories rushing through him was dying down, the pain was coming back. He couldn’t stay here. Already, helicopters were searching. Someone would find Captain America— _Steph_ , he reminded himself again—and treat her injuries. So he had to leave. He had to deal with his arm, and then he had to decide what he would do next.

He had his mission again, but he knew there was more than that. There was James Buchanan Barnes, whoever he was. A dead man. A ghost. A former life. He had to find out. And he had to find out what connected that man, what connected _him_ to Steph Rogers.

He looked down at her one more time, just double-checking that she was still breathing. And then he turned away. He headed into the trees on the edge of the water and out of sight. He had to get a head start before they came looking for him. Either of them. Hydra would want to turn him back into a puppet, though he swore they’d never be able to wipe his mind again. And SHIELD would surely come after him as well. Though they could just as easily want to kill him as capture him.

Lucky for him, the helicarriers would distract both for a decent amount of time. He found an abandoned warehouse far enough down the water that he would be out of the immediate search perimeter. He would move before they widened it. The first thing he did was take stock of his supplies. He still had several knives and one handgun. With the Triskelion in complete disarray, it wouldn’t be hard to steal more weapons. But he couldn’t go in looking like the Winter Soldier. He no longer wanted to spread fear and panic. He needed to be able to blend in. So the first order of business would be to find a change of clothes.

Actually, the first order of business was his arm. It was still dislocated, and would not heal if he didn’t pop it back into its socket. He tested his metal arm first. It had avoided serious damage, which was good for him, because he no longer had anyone who could fix it. He stripped off his soaked leather uniform carefully and dropped it on the concrete floor. He would discard it in the river later, where it could get lost in all the wreckage.

He was soaked right through to the black undershirt he wore, but it would dry quick enough. The water didn’t bother him. Carefully, oh so carefully, he maneuvered his injured arm, always aware of the difference in strength between the metal one and the flesh one. The muscles and tendons all along his back and shoulder screamed in pain as he pulled the arm far enough that he could position it over its socket. With a sickening pop, it slid back into place. He rotated his right arm once, and was pleased with the movement. The shoulder was still on fire, but that would fade after a day.

He looked down at his leather uniform where it lay crumpled on the floor. Next order of business, find a disguise. And weapons.

 

The guards stationed outside Captain America’s room should have honestly been ashamed of themselves. It was child’s play to sneak into the hospital room. The only person Bucky was actually worried about was Natalia. He had to wait until she completely left the hospital before he could sneak in. The sidekick had gone to the bathroom and left Steph completely alone for a few minutes. So no one saw Bucky slip through the window.

He walked up to the bed and gazed down at her unconscious form. It was obvious she had started to heal over the course of the last day, but she still looked like hell. Her face was a patchwork of bruises, he could tell where his own metal fist had fractured her cheekbone. Through the thin material of the hospital gown, he could also tell she was covered in bandages. She had sustained multiple gunshot wounds, after all.

Bucky sighed and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had come here. Perhaps to see for himself that she was still alive. She was going to be okay. As with everything, she would heal. And then it was a question of what she would do next. He, however, knew what he was going to do next.

“I have my mission,” he said quietly, gruffly. He wasn’t used to speaking softly. “You are still my mission. This time I will not fail.” He paused and touched the blanket, not over her body, but where it rested on the side of the bed, just beside her hand. “I am going to protect you. But I need to find out who I am.” He stepped back towards the window when he heard footsteps coming down the hall. “I will come back, once I have an answer to my question.” He moved to the window and then glanced back once. “I will come back,” he said so quietly that he barely heard himself. Steph was unaware of anything he said anyway. So he disappeared out the window, and did not look back a second time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this when I got stuck on a sequel to another fic I was writing. Just a write up of a scene that everyone has already seen? You bet. But hey, the count of Bucky POV chapters has gone up!


	18. But if You Close Your Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for Age of Ultron. Kind of. But it is a based on a scene from Age of Ultron. So if you haven't seen it yet, it could be spoiler-ish.

Steph took a step forward with her shield raised. How was she supposed to stop an enhanced when he moved so fast she couldn’t even see him? And then there was the other one… And it suddenly became clear that other enhanced was a bigger problem when she took another step and found herself in an old dance hall.

She spun around in surprise. The room was filled with a warm sepia light that streamed through glass windows set high on one wall. Streamers filled the room and union jack flags were hung on the walls. The room was full of people celebrating.

Steph looked down and found she was in her old dress uniform from the war. When she looked at the other people, she could see most of the men were in uniforms as well. Some of the women wore British military uniforms with pencil skirts, but most wore dresses made for dancing, and shiny patent leather shoes. The whole room was filled with cheer, the kind that was contagious. People smiled at her and each other, and many were hugging and kissing, and generally just happy to be alive.

She spun on the ball on her foot to take in the scene with a big smile on her face, but stopped before turning in a complete circle. Standing directly in front of her was Bucky. But… It was a younger Bucky, a whole Bucky. He similarly wore his dress uniform. His hair was short and slicked back the way he used to wear it. His eyes shined and were full of life, and he smiled in that carefree way that he used to before the war. The uniform looked practically new, it was so clean and neat.

He held out his left hand, and she reached out and took it without hesitation. His hand was warm under her fingers, and made of flesh. Immediately, he pulled her into his arms, and swayed with her. They moved in a slow dance, as did the other revelers in the room.

“The war is over, Steph,” he said softly, his lips brushing her ear because they were standing so close. His voice was warm, and happy. He was genuinely happy.

Suddenly, she was no longer in her uniform. She was in her mother’s dress. The old dress she had put on only once to test how Bucky felt about her. Even though it didn’t work. It had to look better on her now that she had filled out. She moved back slightly, and he lifted her hand above her head and spun her. The skirts of her dress spun out around her and then settled back against her legs as Bucky pulled her back into his arms.

She looked into his face and met his eyes. There was so much light and love there. Her heart felt tender and young. She did not know what true heartache was. She had not had her heart broken. She had not felt loss. She was still full of pining, and expectation, waiting to see how this boy she loved would respond to her. This was a chance to start everything over from the beginning. To be honest with herself.

“We get to go home,” he said. Over his shoulder, she could see all her old friends, as they were. Peggy and the Commandos, and even Colonel Phillips and Howard Stark, standing and watching them with smiles on their faces.

_Home_. Her tender, fresh heart clenched at the idea. Home was so far away. She had been gone for so long. Years. Yes, she desperately wanted to return to Brooklyn. _Their_ Brooklyn. Just the two of them against the world. Undamaged by the war…They could see where this would go, when there wasn’t a war in the way. Getting to be together, really be together.

She realized that the dance hall was suddenly empty, aside from the ghosts she could see over Bucky’s shoulder. She looked into Bucky’s eyes again, and he smiled at her. Yes, this was everything she wanted. And she wanted it so desperately. But it was a fantasy.

She reached up and placed her hand against his cheek. “You’re gorgeous,” she said.

In response, he turned his head and kissed the middle of her palm.

“And perfect.” He smiled at her at that. She lingered like that for a moment, and then she dropped her hands and took a step back. “My Bucky isn’t.” Her Bucky was scarred and traumatized and had lost his memories. Her Bucky was battle torn, and would never ever look like this Bucky again. “But…” she continued slowly, “if he wasn’t imperfect, I wouldn’t love him so much. Even if I could change him back to how he had been, I wouldn’t. He already had his identity stolen from him once. So he deserves the right to chose who he wants to be now.”

The perfect Bucky, who was even more perfect than perhaps Bucky had ever been, even before the war, stood and watched her.

“My friends are in trouble,” Steph said. “So I need to go help them now.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the dancehall was gone. The dress and the ghosts of the past were gone. The perfect Bucky was gone. She was in her Captain America uniform again, and her shield was still on her arm. She stood in the tanker. It became clear quickly that the others were in worse trouble than she was. So shoved the vision as far back into her mind as she could, and went to help the other Avengers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have only seen Age of Ultron the once, on opening day. So some details may be wrong, which is why this one is super vague. I might come back and flesh this one out more after I see the movie again.


	19. After the battle, Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A successful mission should be celebrated.
> 
> Spoilers for the beginning of Age of Ultron.

Steph sighed tiredly as she changed out of her uniform. She was certainly tired, but not altogether unhappy. Aside from the two mysterious enhanced enemies, who got away, and the injury Barton took, the mission had gone well. Actually, it had gone amazingly well considering it was only supposed to be a bit of recon, and following up on a tip the origin of which was impossible to get out of Maria Hill. Instead, they had to fight against an army of Hydra agents, found Von Strucker, and most important of all, finally recovered Loki’s sceptor. Just like with the Tesseract, the sooner that thing was off Earth, the better. She couldn’t wait for Thor to take it to Asgard. So the thought that it would spend three more days in Tony’s lab didn’t sit right with her. But Banner would be with him the whole time, and he would keep Tony in line.

She considered staying in the Tower a little longer, perhaps shadowing Tony and Bruce, just to be sure. But she was tired. They had devoted a lot of time and energy to tracking down that stupid scepter. And she seriously needed a break before Tony’s party in a few days. So she went home.

Once she had started working with the Avengers more, she moved back to New York so she could be closer to Stark Tower, as it had kind of become the base of operations for the Avengers. She dropped her keys onto the side table by the door as she walked in and then smiled. She could tell she wasn’t alone in the apartment. Bucky _mostly_ lived with her now. Every now and then he would disappear for a few days, but he always came back. She never asked where he went. If he wanted her to know, he’d tell her. But she had a feeling it had to do with his flashbacks, which had become few and far between. He still had to deal with the fallout of being the Winter Soldier.

“Hey,” she said as she turned a corner and came into the dining room/kitchen area. Bucky was sitting at the table with several papers spread out in front of him. His hair was up messily and he wore a T-shirt, so his metal arm was visible.

He looked up and smiled when she entered. “Hey,” he replied. “How’s the avenging?”

“You’re hilarious.” She came around the table and took the chair across from him so she could see what he was doing.

“One of us has to be.” He turned back to his files, but the smirk stayed on his face.

“That’s really saying something if it’s you,” she said airily, but she smiled. She picked up one the papers and saw it had details about Hydra’s movements.

“Heard you guys got caught in a fight,” he said without looking up.

“How could you have heard that already?” she asked. “We just got back!”

He glanced at her. “You’re okay, right? No injuries?”

Steph rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine. Clint was hit pretty bad, but that doctor Helen Cho is patching him up.” She looked at him. “We found Strucker.”

That got Bucky’s attention. He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. “So I heard.”

“Really, how do you know this?”

He rolled his eyes. “Hill sent a message to Sam, to be on standby when you guys went in full-force. He told me.”

“Oh,” Steph said lamely.

“Also, I hacked into your comm.”

“You did _what_?”

Bucky laughed outright at her. The sound was still such an unusual occurrence that it immediately made her surprise and anger disappear. “Kidding, kidding. I tried it once, but Stark shut me out pretty much right away.”

“You know you don’t have to hack in. If you’d just asked, Tony would be happy to make you an unofficial Avenger.”

Bucky shook his head. “The Avengers are your thing. I’m not…” He looked to the side. “It’s too public for me. I’ll stick to tracking down Hydra.”

She looked at him. “Sorry I didn’t call you in for this one. If I’d know it was going to be Hydra…”

He shrugged his right shoulder. “You got the job done. Stopped one of Hydra’s heads.” There was a hardness in Bucky’s eyes.

Steph sighed because she knew what that was about. “Yes. He is still alive.”

“Thought so.”

According to Bucky, the only good Hydra agent was a dead one. But Steph was still Captain America. She wasn’t going to kill someone in cold blood, especially when they had surrendered. Everyone deserved a trial. “But he won’t be hurting anyone. Or conducting any more… experiments…” Steph frowned down at her hands.

Bucky watched her. “So you did run into some successful products of those experiments.”

“Yeah. They’re kids, really.” She shook her head. “But they got away.”

“You’ll find them.” He gathered the papers into a pile.

“So how’s the attack on Hydra going?” she asked.

He sent aside the papers and leaned back in his chair. “They really are true to their moto. There’s always another damn head. Pierce, Whitehall, List, Strucker. But Sam and I have at least messed up some of their bases of operation.”

“I should be helping with that…” she said guiltily. Hydra was her original enemy. In fact, she had been given the serum specifically to stop Hydra and the Red Skull. She had been so caught up with the Avengers lately, that she had to let Bucky and Sam handle that. Though for Bucky, it was more vendetta than anything else. She wondered if he was ever going to be satisfied with his revenge.

He shook his head. “We’ve got it. You’ve got more important things to deal with.”

“So you heard about Loki’s scepter too, then?”

He watched her. “Yeah.”

“You haven’t seen the crazy amount of power that thing has, Buck.” She sighed and ran her hand through her hair. “Not just destructive power. It turned Clint into Loki’s puppet. According to Nat, he still doesn’t talk about that much. Doesn’t like to dwell on it.”

“I get that.”

Steph met his eyes. “But we got it out of Hydra’s hands.”

“And into Stark’s.”

Steph continued to watch him. Bucky and Tony had a certain level of trust and respect for each other, but it was nowhere near how Steph interacted with either of them. They both knew they were on the same side, but they were wary of each other, even though Bucky was wearing a piece of Stark tech. Tony wasn’t going to forgive Bucky for what he’d done as the Winter Soldier, and Bucky was never going to completely trust someone as rich and powerful as Tony.

“It could be worse,” she said. “It could be with SHIELD.”

Bucky snorted, and that broke the tension. “It was with SHIELD. That’s how Hydra got it.” He gathered the papers in his right hand and stood. He found the file where he kept Hydra locations and deposited the papers there.

Steph got to her feet as well and moved over to him. She slipped her arms around his waist from behind and kissed his right shoulder. “Missed you,” she said sincerely.

He turned to smile at her over his shoulder. “It was only a couple days.”

“Still missed you. The fight’s easier when I know you’ve got my back.” She let him turn around and then she rested her head on his chest. His arms wrapped around her instinctively.

“Don’t trust your team?” he asked softly.

“Of course I trust them. But I trust you more.”

“I’m sure they would all get very offended at that.”

Steph laughed and pulled back enough so she could lean up and kiss him. “Well that’s tough for them.” She smiled at him. “So did you also hear about this party Tony’s throwing?”

Bucky’s eye twitched. “Yes…” he said slowly.

She watched his face. “I take it you don’t want to come.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Not if it’s a Stark party. If it was just the Avengers… But there’ll be too many people… I…”

“I know.” She kissed him again. “It’s okay.”

“Hard to believe that once I would’ve been the one trying to drag you to a party.”

She titled her head slightly. “Well… the times, they have a’changed.”

He smiled at her phrase, and then he pulled her close to kiss her again, this time much less chastely. No matter what he said, neither of them liked being separated for days.

She pulled back to whisper against his lips, “So, I am in desperate need of a real shower.” She smirked at him. “Want to join me?”

He smirked back. “Is the answer to that supposed to be anything but yes?”

She laughed and then dragged him into the bathroom. Maybe she needed her own form of revels to celebrate a successful mission.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recently rewatched Age of Ultron. So I thought of this. There's not much more to it than that. Though I might do a super dark Female!Steve variation on Age of Ultron later on...


	20. Gone, Gone, Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was supposed to be a light-hearted night. But then memories happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my variation on a traditional songfic. The song is Gone, Gone, Gone by Phillip Phillips. If you don't know it, I suggest [listening to it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozQ4yV__Vw) first.

“I don’t know, Tony…” Steph said for the third time.

“Come on, Cap. It’ll be fun!” Tony said, also for the third time. He smirked as he leaned across the work table towards her. “It’s a team-building exercise.”

Steph shot him a disbelieving look. She had come into his workshop to ask him a simple question, but instead got to hear his pitch again. “How so?”

“Nothing builds camaraderie like hearing your teammates singing badly to popular songs.” Tony fiddled with some tool or another as he continued to smirk at Steph.

“This all feels like a Tony Stark prank. Karaoke even sounds like a made-up word.”

“All words are made up,” Tony quickly shot back, which made Steph roll her eyes. “Bruce and Barton already agreed.”

“That’s not surprising.”

“And Thor wants to take part because the whole idea amuses him. I don’t think he totally understands the concept of recorded music.”

“And Natasha?”

Tony paused. “She said as long as I provide alcohol, she’ll sing a song.” He looked at her expectantly, with a big grin on his face.

So Steph sighed and said, “Fine.”

 

That was how Tony roped Steph into taking part in an Avengers karaoke night. Rather than go out to an actual karaoke bar, Tony just had a karaoke machine brought into the living room of Avengers Tower. He didn’t want to let Thor loose on unsuspecting mortals. Tony and Clint spent the first half hour fighting over which songs to do while the others sipped their beers and laughed at them. Tony got Bruce to go up and sing, and then Natasha did a sexy little number.

“Come on, Cap, you’re up!” Clint encouraged.

“And no old songs,” Tony said. “You have to pick something new.”

“Like how you did Highway to Hell?” Clint said.

“Hey. Highway to Hell is a _classic_.”

“Yes, it was quite good,” Thor chimed in.

“Thank you, Thor.” Tony smirked at Clint.

“Don’t worry, boys,” Steph said as she got up and walked over to the machine. She found the song she wanted and selected it before tentatively picking up the mic. “The song I chose is so new it’s from within the last few years.”

The others laughed and Steph just smiled as she pressed play. She gripped the mic a bit tightly as the notes of an acoustic guitar came over the speakers. It wasn’t really like performing made her nervous. She’d done all those USO shows after all.

“ _When life leave you high and dry,_ ” she began softly, “ _I’ll be at your door tonight._ ”

Tony whistled quietly. “Damn, who knew Cap could sing.”

Steph smiled and chanted, “ _If you need help, if you need help._ ” She’d had a bad ear before the procedure, but that was cleared up with the serum. So it just made sense that now she had perfect pitch as well. She was supposed to be the pinnacle of human physique, after all. She glanced out the large windows that had a picturesque view of the Manhattan skyline. She hadn’t really chosen this song randomly. It always stood out to her when she heard it playing on the radio. “ _I’ll shut down the city lights._ ”

“ _I’ll lie, cheat, I’ll beg and bribe,_ ” Steph sang as she walked down the sidewalk on a cold morning. She wrapped her coat tightly around her skinny frame as she hurried to meet Bucky. She looked up as the first drops of snow touched her face. “ _To make you well, to make you well._ ”

“ _When enemies are at your door…_ ” Steph rushed into the isolation ward to find Bucky strapped to that damn table, delirious and sick. “ _I’ll carry you away from war,_ ” she sang viciously as she helped him down before pulling him into her arms to hug him tightly. “ _If you need help, if you need help._ ”

Steph looked across the weak glow of the lamp that illuminated her tent one dark night much later, as they planned out their assault that would happen the next morning. Bucky frowned at the map as they again went over exactly how they would get onto the train that was supposed to be carrying Zola. “ _Your hope dangling by a string._ ” Steph pushed aside the papers when the other left so she could scoot close to Bucky and place her hands on his face. “ _I’ll share in your suffering._ ” He kissed her softly and she smiled against his lips as she whispered, “ _To make you well, to make you well._ ”

“ _Give me reasons to believe,_ ” she almost yelled at him as he tried to convince her not to try to enlist yet again. He was already dressed in his uniform, on his last night before shipping off to war. “ _That you would do the same for me!_ ”

“ _And I would do it for you!_ ” Steph sang as she dragged Bucky to her tent that first night they got back to the camp after she rescued all those soldier from the Hydra factory. Their first night together. “ _For you…_ ”

“ _Baby, I’m not moving on._ ” Steph shuffled through all the papers SHIELD had given her, about all her old, now deceased, comrades. “ _I’ll love you long after you’re gone._ ”

“ _For you, for you!_ ” Steph watched Bucky dance with dame after dame. Every time, she thought about leaving that dance hall, but she didn’t. Because every now and then he would glance at her and smile. In the end, he didn’t go home with any of them.

“ _You will never sleep alone,_ ” Steph sang as they slowly danced in a circle around her room in London. “ _I’ll love you long after you’re gone._ ”

Steph opened her eyes, and hadn’t realized she had closed them in the first place. She found the other Avengers watching her quietly. Even Tony seemed completely absorbed in her performance. Steph glanced away. “ _And long after you’re gone, gone, gone._ ” She took a deep breath at the break after the chorus and then continued.

Steph watched Bucky use the last of his bullets to fight off his Hydra attackers before she opened the door on the train and tossed him her gun. “ _When you fall like a statue, I’m gon’ be there to catch you._ ”

Steph carefully sat next to Bucky when they took a break on their long march away from the Hydra factory. He put up a brave face, but she could tell he was completely exhausted from that little walk. “ _Put you on your feet, you on your feet._ ”

Steph took the punch aimed at her right in the face. It was hard to tell if this particular bully would have still hit her had he known she was a girl. Maybe he still would. He was a creep like that. Steph spit blood out of her mouth and said, “ _And if your well is empty, not a thing will prevent me._ ” Before the guy could get in another punch, Bucky was there to send the guy crying home to his mama. He helped her up and carefully wiped blood off her face. “ _Tell me what you need,_ ” she sang softly as she gazed up at him. “ _What do you need?_ ”

“ _I surrender honestly,_ ” Steph sang as she spread her arms, glaring across the catwalk on the Insight helicarrier at the person standing in the way of her mission, who happened to be the man she still loved. “ _You’ve always done the same for me,_ ” she pleaded before launching into her attack.

“ _So I would do it for you._ ” She looked at the marble tombstone, which was more of a monument. The other side was her tribute, but here she could see the engraved name _Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes_. “ _For you…_ ” She touched the stone gently. “ _Baby, I’m not moving on. I’ll love you long after you’re gone._ ”

“ _For you, for you,_ ” Steph breathed out as she smashed an alien in the face. All she could think was how she missed her war, where everything seemed simpler than this crazy gods-from-space situation.

“ _You will never never sleep alone,_ ” Steph sang to the Smithsonian exhibit with Bucky’s picture, the one that condensed his life to two paragraphs. “ _I’ll love you long after you’re gone._ ”

This time, Steph smiled softly to herself, but she still avoided making eye contact with the rest of the Avengers. “ _And long after you’re gone, gone, gone._ ”

“ _You’re my backbone,_ ” Steph said as she tried to convince Bucky he knew her while the Insight helicarrier fell apart around them.

“ _You’re my cornerstone,_ ” she said on the street, even though he had already disappeared in the smoke of the blast from the rocket-launcher Nat set off.

“ _You’re my crutch,_ ” Steph started, but she huffed in pain as she pulled his knife out of her shoulder, and then jumped on Bucky to stop him from getting the computer chip, “ _when my legs stop moving._ ”

“ _You’re my head start,_ ” she said as she yanked a computer chip out of its terminal, only to spin around and block the left-handed punch he threw with her shield.

Steph clenched the material of her uniform over her chest as she lay on the floor of the train after pulling herself out of the opening. “ _You’re my rugged heart._ ”

“ _You’re the pulse that I’ve always needed,_ ” she whispered, only a breath away from him, as she pulled his body closer in the darkness, both trying to be quiet so the other soldiers wouldn’t hear them.

Steph caught her breath again after a particularly bad asthma attack, and used the few extra moments to relish being held in Bucky’s arms. “ _Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating._ ”

Steph tapped her foot in time with the beat. She hadn’t meant to get so into the song, but the others didn’t seem to mind. “ _Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating._ ”

“ _Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating,_ ” she said just before Bucky moved close to kiss her, even though they were standing right outside the mess hall.

Steph looked up at him. She could tell her cheekbone was fractured from his punches, and it was getting hard to keep her eyes open. But still, he paused before delivering the final blow. “ _Like a drum, my heart never stops beating…_ ”

“ _For you, for you!_ ” She smiled at her small audience, and they smiled back.

“ _Baby, I’m not moving on,_ ” she sang to Bucky, only half dressed in her uniform just before daybreak. They would have another mission soon, but not now. “ _I’ll love you long after you’re gone._ ”

“ _For you, for you,_ ” Steph whispered as Bucky found her after her mother’s funeral. “ _You will never sleep alone. I’ll love you long after you’re gone._ ”

Steph drove away from Central Park after she and the other Avengers sent Thor and Loki back to Asgard. “ _For you, for you. Baby, I’m not moving on._ ” She finally made her way back to Brooklyn after being gone so long. “ _I’ll love you long after you’re gone._ ”

“ _For you, for you._ ” Steph tried not to let the pain in her voice come out as she sang. She didn’t want the others to know how she couldn’t help but imagine all the years of interactions with Bucky because of this song. “ _You will never sleep alone._ ”

“ _I’ll love you long..._ ” Steph paused and reached her fingers out further, just a little bit further. But it wasn’t far enough, and she had to watch Bucky fall. “ _Long after you’re gone…_ ”

Steph swallowed, but then she tapped her palm against the side of her leg. “ _Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating._ ”

Steph let Dum Dum talk the Howling Commandos into another round of drinks. She just smiled at Bucky and caught his eyes, which made him smile back. “ _Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating._ ”

Steph took another sip of the alcohol she had found, but it did nothing to numb the pain. She just couldn’t get drunk. “ _Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating._ ”

“ _Like a drum,_ ” Steph yelled over the roaring on the wind as she pulled the controls down, turning the massive plane into a nosedive, “ _my heart never stops beating._ ”

“ _For you…_ ” Steph whispered as she fell into the water under the crashing helicarriers.

Steph opened her eyes again to see the assembled Avengers watching her so silently you would think someone had died. She took a breath and then finished, “ _And long after you’re gone, gone gone._ ”

The others didn’t say anything for a moment, but then Tony clapped softly. “That was… wow, Steph.”

“Thanks,” she said softly as she moved away from the machine.

Natasha met her eye, but didn’t say anything. Though, based on her expression, she knew exactly what had been going through Steph’s mind as she sang.

“It’s someone else’s turn,” Steph said. “I.. uh… I need some fresh air. But I’ll be back in a minute.” She moved past the others before they could protest, and walked out onto the balcony. She leaned her elbows on the railing and looked down at the city of lights. Quietly, just to herself, she finished the song, “ _I’ll love you long after you’re gone, gone, gone…_ ”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So obviously I totally love throwing references to music into my stuff. After all, 90% of my titles are song lyrics. So this was the next logical step. And come on, this song is so them.


End file.
